From the Beginning
by apyrateslyfe4me
Summary: Severus and Lily are best friends, but when they both enter Hogwarts, will different houses and that arrogant toerag James Potter drive them apart?
1. Muggle!

DISCLAIMER: These are not my characters. They belong solely to JK Rowling. The dialogue in scenes that appear in Deathly Hallows is mostly hers.

The two little girls threw open the door to their home, the shorter one looking as if she was on the verge of tears and the older looking quite indignant. The older girl, with a harsh little face, turned to slam the door, staring out into the empty street as if someone was standing in the road, someone whom the little girl did not want to speak to.

She slammed the door with an "Ugh!" of disgust, and then marched into the kitchen after the younger girl. The eleven-year-old went immediately to the refrigerator and yanked the door open, obviously perturbed with something. "Do you want something?" she asked her sister harshly.

"No," the trembling voice of the younger, red-haired girl said.

"Are you sure?" the blonde asked her as she pulled out a large bottle of grape juice.

"Yes," the other girl said from the kitchen table, her head in her hands.

The blonde went to the cupboard and pulled out a glass cup with the picture of a tall pine tree on it. She pulled another, matching, down from the tall cupboard and proceeded to fill them both with grape juice. Looking up at her younger sister, who sat silently at the kitchen table, tears plunking out of her eyes, the blonde girl said softly, "Don't cry."

The little redhead didn't look up, but nodded slowly. The skinny blonde girl walked over to her sister, placing one of the glasses of grape juice in front of her sister. Despite her previous protests, the redhead picked up the glass and began to sip the juice between pursed lips. But still, tears ran out of her pretty green eyes and into the glass, salt mingling with the sweet juice.

"Don't cry, Lily," the blonde one repeated, sitting across from her sister.

"I'm not." Lily's tone was firm.

"He's just a stupid idiot," the blonde one said.

"But, Petunia," Lily said, her voice a slight whine, "he called me—called me—"

"Who cares?" Petunia asked. "What he was said was the stupidest thing I've ever heard. '_I'm a wizard_,' yeah right! There's no such thing as witches or wizards! He probably just likes to make believe he is one because he has nothing better to do at that house of his." Petunia's voice was filled with contempt as she mentioned the boy.

"But he called you—"

"Something so stupid that I don't even know what it means." Petunia paused, thinking. "He probably doesn't know what it means, either. He probably heard it from his dad. He's always drunk, who knows what comes out of his mouth?" She fell silent, but Lily could hear her mutter the word _Muggle_ under her breath, with a scoff of disbelief. "Just forget him."

The two little girls sat in silence for a moment, hearing furniture being moved around upstairs, where their parents were painting Petunia's bedroom yellow. Lily lowered her glass, matching it up with a ring in the wooden table, where Petunia had left a full glass of water the week before. Petunia took another sip from her glass, looking oddly at Lily.

"But—" Lily's voice was choked, even though all of her tears were now gone. "I am different, right, Tuney?" Petunia sighed, lowering her glass as well. "All those things I can do—"

"Even though Mummy says not to," Petunia muttered.

"Only because Mummy doesn't know what they are!" Lily cried. "No one does! This Snape boy…" her voice trailed off as she stared at the purple liquid inside her glass. "That Snape boy is the only one who seems to know. Maybe," she said, a little breathlessly, both excited and scared at the prospect, "maybe, he's right."

"Right about what?" Petunia cried, a little too shrilly.

"Maybe I am a witch."

The words seemed to hang in the air between the two girls. "Pah!" Petunia exclaimed in disbelief, and then got up from the table to empty her glass into the sink. "Please." With that dismissive word, she ran out of the kitchen and bounded up the staircase, her ponytail bouncing.

"Petunia!" Lily cried, following her, leaving her glass on the table. She ran her tongue over her sticky lips, where a ring of purple color had formed from the juice. Lily didn't think it was impossible; she and Petunia had learned all about witches and witch trials in history class. Lily ran up the stairs and almost collided with Petunia, who stood watching her sweating mother and father slap bright, nauseating yellow paint onto the walls of Petunia's tiny bedroom.

Petunia looked positively delighted, and ran into the middle of the tarp-covered room, slightly sliding. "It's great!" she exclaimed, running to her father, who stood on a ladder, trying to reach the top of the room with a brush. "May I try?"

"Of course," her father replied with a laugh. "There's a brush right over there." He pointed to where the bucket of yellow paint was lying, and Petunia picked up a dry brush and began to paint the wall next to the electrical socket.

"Tuney," Lily began again, walking to where her sister sat on the floor. "Don't you think—"

But Petunia had thrown Lily a look that clearly said, _Not around Mum and Dad_. Lily fell silent as Petunia continued to paint.

"You want to paint, Lily dear?" her mother asked from where she stood next to the window. "My back is killing me. I just need a tiny break." Of course Lily couldn't say no. She walked slowly over to where her mother held out the brush and took it, a drop of yellow spilling onto her big toe. She cast another look over to Petunia, who seemed to have forgotten all about the Snape boy and Lily being called a witch.


	2. Ants In Your Potion

In a house far away from where Lily was painting her sister's bedroom, a young James Potter stood in his backyard, a crick forming in his young neck as he stared up into the tall oak tree. James glanced at the pile of wood near the base of the tree just as a single plank rose from the pile and floated up to where James's father stood in the tree.

"It's looking good, Dad," James told his father, who grabbed the plank and fitted it upright next to another.

"Thanks, son," Mr. Potter said, and summoned a few nails into his hand, where they went immediately to being magically hammered into the wooden plank. He waved his wand once more, and another board joined James's father in the tree.

James smiled. His tree house was coming along well. His father had already built the floor of the house, and they had only started that morning. The large oak tree would make for a spacious tree house, James had decided, and James's uncle David had come over just days before with all the necessary scrap wood.

"If everything goes like it is today," Mr. Potter continued, "your tree house should be done by the day after tomorrow. Maybe even sooner, if your uncle comes over again and lends a hand."

James would have helped his father himself, if he had had his wand yet. He knew it was only a matter of time before he had his eleventh birthday and would receive his letter for Hogwarts, resulting in a much-anticipated trip to Diagon Alley, but until then, James was forced to help his parents manually, the Muggle way.

"James!" his mother called to him from the kitchen, and James turned around wildly. "Come in here now, please!"

James swallowed deeply, knowing he was in trouble. Yesterday he had accidentally dropped his magical ant farm into one of his mother's potions, and he knew he was going to get it. His mother's potions were heavily guarded, and he knew he'd get twice as many smacks for finding out how to get past the barriers that surrounded the potions than for actually dropping the ants in it. His mother had cupboards upon cupboards of potions ingredients, and it wasn't as if James had spilled that ant-induced potion all over the recipe—

Oh, wait. He had done that, too. Hopefully, his mother had a back up copy.

"You'd better get a move on, son," Mr. Potter said, summoning another plank of wood. "or else your mother might think you did something wrong."

_Oh, no!_ James thought. Did his father know? James nodded, flushing a little, and then turned and ran to the house, skidding to a stop in the kitchen, where his mother stood stirring a smoking cauldron of potion. James recognized it as the one he had wrecked the previous afternoon.

"Y-Yes?" James asked, his voice squeaking.

His mother didn't look up, but pushed an envelope towards her son. James held his breath, thousands of possibilities running through his mind. A warrant for his arrest, a denial to Hogwarts, an ending to his subscription of _Which Broomstick?_, all because he had dropped ants into his mother's potion.

"A letter from your grandmother," Mrs. Potter said, staring quizzically at the potion, and James let out a giant sigh of relief. He grabbed the envelope, and split it open, a birthday card and ten gold Galleons falling out into his hand. Mrs. Potter looked up for a moment, and laughed a bit. "She never remembers when your birthday is, does she?"

James shook his head, also laughing, but his mother was still worrying over the potion. "What wrong, Mum?" James dared to ask.

"I don't understand!" she exclaimed, still stirring, her black hair beginning to frizz over the steam. "When I left it yesterday afternoon, it was hard and sticky and cement-like, the exact opposite of what it was supposed to be. And now I come back, and it's perfect! Exactly how it is supposed to look, according to my hypothesis. And I don't know what I did." She sighed, and James's guilty feeling lightened considerably. Maybe he hadn't messed it up! Mrs. Potter straightened, and called out, "Viggy! Viggy, come here!" She looked over at James and said, "What does your grandma say?"

James didn't bother to look at the card, but looked at his mother stupidly. "'Happy Birthday'?" he suggested.

"Your father almost done?"

"He says day after tomorrow."

Just then, a loud crack filled the kitchen, and a smiling, dumpy little house-elf stood in their midst, stilling polishing an old lamp with a dirty rag. "Yes, Mistress?" the house-elf asked. James noticed the house-elf was doing some sort of little jig, crossing his legs and hopping. "Does the Mistress have the potion done yet?" Viggy asked Mrs. Potter.

"I'm not sure, Viggy," Mrs. Potter told the house-elf. "But it looks like it should. Would you be alright with drinking this, to see if it gets rid of your boils?"

"Boils?" James asked, now afraid of what side effect the tainted potion would have on Viggy. "I don't see any boils."

Viggy did his little dance again and said, "They're not normally in a place that I would show the young Master. But yes, Viggy will drink the potion."

Mrs. Potter looked worried. She told the elf, "You know, Viggy, you don't have to drink it just because I asked." But Viggy only smiled and held out his hand to take the potion from Mrs. Potter. She cautiously ladled some into a small vial and slowly handed it to Viggy, who immediately downed the contents.

James braced himself for choking noises, splutters of pain, but none came. Instead, Viggy stood there, still smiling, but he longer did his little dance.

"Yes!" screeched Mrs. Potter. "Yes!" A large thump came from outside, and the three beings rushed to the window to see what had happened. In hearing Mrs. Potter's yell, Mr. Potter had fallen out of the tree and landed on his back.

"What happened?" he asked, slowly straightening up.

"I did it, James, I did it!" Mrs. Potter cried to James Potter, Senior. "The potion worked!"

"Congratulations, dear," Mr. Potter said, and his head fell with a thud against the ground.

"Viggy, go help Dad," James told the house-elf, and Viggy proceeded to run out the large house and out to the yard.

Mrs. Potter was still rambling. "I can't believe it! Everything was going wrong, and then I woke up this morning and here it was, perfect as perfect could be, I can't have possibly left anything out of the recipe, maybe it just needed to simmer for a while longer, I knew—!"

"Mum!" James cried, knowing she would never be angry with him if he told her how he had helped. But she kept on jabbering away. "Mum!"

"What, James, what?" she cried, shuffling through papers, looking for the instructions.

"I put ants in the potion," he said boldly, smiling at his mother.

She dropped the papers abruptly, and then looked at James with wide eyes. "_WHAT!?!?!_"


	3. Spinner's End

That evening, after she had washed the dinner plates without the help of magic (as Petunia was watching her the entire time, but not bothering to help), Lily had pulled on her coat and snuck out of the house while Petunia watched television. Her parents were still working on the bedroom upstairs, and Lily began to feel lightheaded every time she breathed in the fumes.

The summer night air was cool, and Lily stared down at her pale toes, which felt comfortable in her open-toed sandals. The spot of yellow paint that had fallen on her toe earlier that afternoon was still there, despite her many attempts to scrub it off. Lily reached the corner of the sidewalk and kept walking, all the way down to the park where they had played earlier that morning.

The park was full of people, all children playing as the sun began to fade behind the hills in the distance. Lily smiled at all the toddlers playing in the sand, and saw a few friends of hers from school swinging on the swing set.

Lily continued to walk, even as they ran up to say hello.

"Lily!" they called, running in their shorts and sandals. "Hi!"

"Hi!" Lily called back as her friends caught up to her.

"Where's Petunia?" one of the girls asked.

"At home, watching television," Lily said, sticking her hands in her pockets.

"Want to play?" another girl asked Lily.

"No thanks," Lily told them as she reached the corner. Lily looked up and read the street names in the approaching dusk. _Spinner's End_, read one sign, and the one on top of it, the street she was walking on, said _Thicket Lane_. She went to turn onto Spinner's End, but one of the girls grabbed her shoulder.

"Where are you going?" she asked a little fearfully.

"Down here," Lily said, with a smile, and kept walking. Her friends hesitated for a moment, and then they both turned and ran back to the park. Lily began to walk down the long street, along a tiny river that wound around the development of houses.

Lily had never been this way before. She walked down the old cobblestone street cautiously. It became apparent that as she kept walking, she walked into another development of houses that was not her own. Crickets chirped from the small little river, and the bushes rustled with animals unknown to Lily. She began to shiver in the cool air, and pulled out her flashlight, clicking it on so she could see well in the oncoming dark.

After a few minutes, the lamplights flickered on and Lily found herself standing in the middle of a court of brick homes. She didn't know which house was his, but in the silent night she suddenly heard a voice screech, "_Severus_!" It was coming from the house directly behind her. Lily blushed a little, and then made her way to the door of the house.

The cement was cracked and the window broken, so that the tiny breeze outside fluttered the dark curtains a little. Tall brushes grew outside of the house, and Lily felt her heart rate speed up as she approached the door. She knocked, a little bit scared. She waited. There was no answer. She knocked again.

The door creaked open slowly, to reveal the Snape boy. He didn't realize it was Lily standing in front of him until she shone the flashlight upward so he could see her face in the dark.

"Oh," his harsh voice said, staring, shocked but pleased, at Lily. "Hello."

"Hello," she said with a smile. There was a crash inside the house, and Lily heard a man's voice scream Severus's name this time. Severus's face flushed deeply, as if he was remembering where he was. The two children stood in silence for a minute, until Lily said, "So…."

"So," Snape repeated, still embarrassed.

Lily decided jumping right into it would be best. "I want to know," she began slowly, "about magic."

At the word _magic_, Severus's face lit up, despite the lack of light coming from his home, and he stepped out of his house, despite his parents' calls for him. "Come on," he told her, grabbing her hand and towing her down the street.

"Where are we going?" she asked him as they raced out of the neighborhood.

"Somewhere safe," Severus told Lily. They continued to run, Severus never letting go of Lily's hand, until they reached the banks of the tiny river. Lily immediately sat down, panting a little and slapping at bugs that swarmed around the water.

"So, magic," she finally said, when Severus didn't do anything but stare at her. "Tell me."

Severus didn't know where to begin, there was so much. But he finally settled down beside Lily, and, picking up a stick, whirled it through the air. "Wands," he said, and felt a flipping sensation in his chest as a huge smile filled Lily's red hair-framed face. "When you do magic, you get a wand…"


	4. Losing and Earning Money

For punishment, James had been forced to surrender the five Galleons he had received from Grandma Potter to his mother, who had instructed that he use them to buy more ants for his farm. Also, Mr. Potter had told his son that he would not continue working on James's tree house until his mother had sold her first batch of Boils of Elf Removing Potion, or BERP. Disappointed, James and his father had immediately Floo-powdered to Diagon Alley, where James had wistfully heard the clinking of gold in his pockets and wished it had been going towards that new Venus 7000 broomstick in the window of Quality Quidditch Supplies, not towards ants.

Instead, they entered Magical Menagerie, the gold still jingling happily inside his pocket despite James's sour mood. They approached the counter, which was crowded with papers and something that looked slightly like a Muggle calculator and some empty cages and a large circular fish tank that held a large, sinister-looking creature. It peered at James with yellow eyes, and it claws scraped against the tank edges.

"Grindylow," Mr. Potter told James as they approached the counter. A bubbly sort of growling noise came from the Grindylow until the woman at the counter, who was conversing with a peaky sort of pale boy and his mother, smacked the tank very hard.

James and his father approached the counter, standing a ways away from the skinny pale boy, who was handed a package by the woman at the counter. The boy turned around and jumped a little, seeing James standing there. James smiled at the boy, who seemed about James's age, and the boy smiled back. James noticed something sparkling mischievously in the boy's eye that kind of reminded James of himself. He wondered what was in the boy's package.

The boy and his mother left the shop, and James and Mr. Potter walked to the counter. "What'll it be, boys?" asked the witch behind the counter cheerfully, with sort of a twangy accent.

Mr. Potter nudged James, who said darkly, "Ants," and slapped his five Galleons on the table.

The witch laughed. "I've a feeling you aren't too happy about purchasing these ants, m'boy," she said, scooping up the Galleons and leading James and his father across the shop, to where an entire wall was covered with clear boxes of ants, not unlike James's old ant farm.

"Not really," James said. The witch laughed, and then picked up a plastic bag and a scoop. "Which?" she asked James, who pointed to the purple ones at eye level near the fish tanks. She opened the box, and James expected the ants top crawl out, but they didn't.

"Are they dead?" James asked, and the witch shook her head.

"Just paralyzed," she said, and scooped a large amount of ants into the plastic bag. "Just hit them with the reverse spell and they'll wake right up." She handed him the plastic bag and pocketed the Galleons. "Have a nice day!"

As they walked out of the store and down past Quality Quidditch Supplies, James still couldn't help but staring at the new broom in the window. "We just got you a new broom for your birthday last year, son," Mr. Potter said, an arm around his son's shoulders.

"I know," James said, still wishing he had the Galleons to buy it. "I know."

They exited Diagon Alley through the Leaky Cauldron, and they stepped into the fireplace together, shouting "The Potter home!" in unison. As soon as they spun out the fireplace, their robes ashy, and fell onto the carpeted living-room floor, Mrs. Potter and Viggy both ran up, Mrs. Potter clutching a letter in her right hand.

"They bought some!" she cried, showing the letter to her husband. "I got a letter from Hogwarts! They bought everything I've made so far _and_ two more batches! Have you got the ants?" she asked James, who handed them over. "Beautiful!" she cried. "Oh, can you believe it, James! And Dumbledore is paying such a lot for this stuff! He says there's a huge sweep of the elf boils at Hogwarts and they need all the medicine they can get! We're going to be rich, rich I say!" And this time James's mother did a little dance all the way out of the living room and into the kitchen.

Viggy stood there, smiling contentedly. "The Mistress is very happy today," he told James and his father.

"I see," said Mr. Potter, but James was only thinking of one thing: now that some of his mother's potion had been purchased, Mr. Potter was able to start working on the tree house again.


	5. Eavesdropping

The following week, Petunia was sitting on the couch once more, brooding over how incredibly bright her bedroom looked after it was painted and watching a cartoon. Lily was in the kitchen, putting away the dishes. Petunia was having the worst day: her room was not a good color, it had rained despite it being summertime, Lily was hardly paying any attention to her in the past week, and now the house was incredibly quiet. Mr. and Mrs. Evans had left the two girls home alone while they went out for dinner, as it was their anniversary.

Petunia sat alone, turning down the volume of the television. But just as she did so, she heard the running water stop and the front door open. Then it closed. Petunia sat up. "Lily!" she called, and when her sister did not reply, she grabbed her jacket off of the couch and ran outside after her sister.

Lily didn't know that Petunia was following her. Lily went all the way to the park, a lone branch in her right hand, and Petunia crept silently along behind her. When they reached the park, Lily pushed straight through a big gathering of trees until she reached a clearing. And, much to Petunia's hatred and surprise, who should be there, waiting for Lily, but Severus Snape himself.

Petunia wanted to cry out to Lily, prevent her from talking to Snape, but as Lily approached Snape and sat down, it was apparent from the look in Snape's eyes that they had met here before quite often.

Petunia, however, snuck behind a tree that was resting on the banks of a tiny little river. It was different from the one by the boy's house: cleaner and not as littered, but there were still bugs swarming around it and it took all Petunia could muster to keep the bugs away. She stayed behind the tree, listening to their conversation.

And as she listened to what the Snape boy was describing to her sister, Petunia became enthralled with everything out of his mouth: a magic school, elves, even the frightening creatures called _dementors_ that Snape said guarded the wizard jail.

She watched as Lily picked up her stick and began to wave it in the air. The Snape boy couldn't take his eyes off Lily. Lily dropped the stick and said in hushed tones, "It _is_ real, isn't it? It's not a joke? Petunia says you're lying to me. Petunia says there isn't a Hogwarts. It _is_ real, isn't it?"

Petunia drew in a sharp breath, hurt by Lily's doubt. And as Snape assured Lily that it all _was_ real, Petunia became aware of just how much the boy was polluting her sister's mind. But the way the boy spoke of it, in hushed tones, almost in reverence, even made Petunia begin to think it was real.

_But it isn't_! she cried silently to herself, shaking her head as if to wake herself up from a terrible dream. _None of it is real_. And, just as she was about to leave her sister behind, her foot slipped on the still-wet leaves and both Lily and Snape looked up.

"Tuney!" Lily cried with a smile as Petunia staggered into sight. But Snape had no kind words. He jumped, hurled blurred words at her about spying and sneaking, and it was all Petunia could do to muster up enough strength to point, jeeringly, and ridicule his clothes. (Believe me, there were all sorts of things about Snape that Petunia could have made fun of, but, being so flustered and embarrassed, his shirt was the first thing she thought of.)

But Snape's expression was so livid, angry. Petunia could see the whites of his eyes as the wind started to swell around them. Lily shivered, thinking it was going to rain, but Petunia heard a loud _crack_ and she was on the ground, a roaring pain surging through her shoulder and tears prickling the corners of her eyes.

"Petunia!" Lily shrieked, running to where she lay. But Petunia staggered up, hurt by the satisfaction in Snape's eyes, burst into tears and ran away. "Tuney!" she cried again, and then whirled on Severus. "How could you?" she shrieked.

Severus looked shocked. "I—I didn't—"

Lily's words were slurred. "Yes, yes you did, I know you did! You hurt my sister!"

"I didn't!" But Severus's words were useless. Lily sent a look of pure loathing at Severus and ran after Petunia, who had vanished from the park.

Petunia's sandaled feet thumped down the sidewalk as she tried to wipe the tears from her eyes. "Tuney! Tuney!" she could hear Lily call, but she kept running. Finally, the short little redhead caught up with her older sister and pulled her back. "Tuney, I'm so sorry—"

"I _hate_ him!" Petunia spat, still sobbing. "I knew he was evil from the beginning! And he's probably trying to make you turn evil as well, Lily Evans! I hate him!"

Lily fell silent, hurt at Petunia's words, because even though she was angry with Severus for hurting Petunia, she knew they were still friends and not even Petunia's loathing could change that. "I'm sorry you think that, Tuney," Lily said softly.

Petunia was silent for a moment. "Don't tell me you're still planning on speaking with him, Lily?" Lily fell guiltily silent. "Oh, Lily!" Petunia exclaimed, and turned around to march home. Lily stared wistfully after her sister, and then turned and made her way back through the trees, where Severus still sat. The two sisters were never the same again.

As Petunia marched huffily home, she came to a decision: Lily needed to be protected from that Snape boy. He was dirtying up her thoughts, Petunia decided, and Lily was too mesmerized with his tales to know the difference. Lily needed Petunia to keep her away from Snape. The day the Hogwarts letter came for Lily, she thought, Petunia would make sure there was one for her, too.


	6. Not His Letter

Over the next few weeks, Mrs. Potter forgot her anger towards her son. In fact, her exasperated feeling morphed into something James really couldn't understand. True, she had made him waste all his birthday money on buying ants, but now that Dumbledore, St. Mungo's, and even the Bulgarian wizarding school Durmstrang had placed an order with Mrs. Potter, James had been treated like a little prince.

Never before allowed into the storeroom where his mother kept the potions ingredients, every day James was asked by his mother to venture into the dark cupboard and pull out this ingredient and that jar of dragon's blood and so on and so forth.

James's tree house had been finished for a while now, and he liked to invite some of the other children who lived in the village to come play in it. Unfortunately, however, James was the oldest child of the group, and so he was forced to play Hogwarts with seven year olds who were still attending Muggle school. But every day, Mrs. Potter would give the boys a bit of money and they would run to the ice cream shop just down the street, with Viggy in attendance as well.

Mrs. Potter's BERP potions were going well; in fact, the family had earned quite a bit of gold from it. Mr. Potter continued to be his wife's assistant, and was very busy helping her as the end of July came to a close. In fact, Mrs. Potter ran out of the kitchen on the morning of August first just after a large tawny owl had arrived, waving a scrap of parchment and yelling excitedly.

"James, James!" she called, and James stuck his head out of the tree house door, just as he was pretending to teach the younger boys how to brew a potion that made you lucky.

"What is it, Mum?" James asked, giggling slightly as his frizzy-haired mother ran out into the yard.

"A letter, a letter from Dumbledore!" she cried, and James almost fell out of the tree with excitement.

"Dumbledore?"

"Yes, Dumbledore!" his mother yelled. "The boils are still going round Hogwarts and the staff has run out of BERP potion and he's asking me if I would be kind enough to make him another batch! Can you believe this? BERP is sky-rocketing!"

James hurriedly climbed out of the tree house, leaving the boys behind and completely forgetting about them. "Can I read the letter?" he asked, holding out a hand. Mrs. Potter, still beside herself with excitement, nodded and handed over the letter.

Dear Mrs. Potter,

I can't tell you how grateful the staff at Hogwarts and I are. Your ingenious potion has cured almost all of the boils the house-elves have had. However, the amount of BERP potion (what a hilarious name) I originally requested from you was not enough to cure the entire population of elves here at the school. Would you be kind enough to brew us up another batch and have it ready by tomorrow? I've heard it doesn't take that long to make. I'll drop by your home tomorrow to pick it up, as I have a delivery for young James as well.

My kindest thanks,

Albus Dumbledore

James's eyes widened at the mention of a delivery for himself. If it was from Dumbledore, James knew it had to be his Hogwarts letter, it _had_ to be! His mother snatched the letter back and read it greedily again.

"He's coming today?" James asked.

"Yes!" Mrs. Potter cried happily. "I've got to get things ready, you understand!" James stood there, a little dazed, and shocked, but then his mother grabbed his wrist and began to tow him towards the house. "You, James, you'll help!"

"Where's dad?" James asked, fully not wanting to help at all.

"He just got a job at the Muggle post office," Mrs. Potter said absentmindedly as they entered the house. "He's there now. Here, take these," she said, and levitated some glass vials towards him. "Put one spoonful in each vial, that's enough for one curing dose. I know what you're thinking. 'How could Dad get a job at the Muggle post office?' well, I'll tell you…" Mrs. Potter drug on, while James filled vial after vial with BERP potion and stared at the magical clock hanging just above the oven.

An hour passed…then another hour…then another…and James began to wonder whether Dumbledore was coming at all. But just as he thought this, there was a knock at the door. The two fell silent, and turned to look at each other with frightened looks. Mrs. Potter hurriedly smoothed down her hair and ran to get the door. James fell still, wondering if the crinkling sound of paper coming from the doorway was James's Hogwarts letter.

"…so glad you're here, Headmaster," Mrs. Potter said, entering the kitchen, and James's eyes widened incredibly when Dumbledore walked into their kitchen, carrying a box that he set down onto the kitchen table.

James stared at the old man. Dumbledore smiled at James, and the twinkle in his blue eyes made James feel more relaxed. "James, dear, this is Professor Dumbledore," Mrs. Potter said, leading James to Dumbledore, "and he is going to be your headmaster at Hogwarts this year."

"Hello," James said, bolder than he thought he was going to, and held out a hand for Dumbledore to shake.

The old man laughed. "Charming boy," he said. "And speaking of Hogwarts…" _This is it_, James thought. _He's going to give me my letter_. And, sure enough, Dumbledore reached into his box and pulled out an envelope made of yellowing parchment. "I wanted to deliver your acceptance letter in person." Dumbledore handed the letter to James, who took it in great awe. Dumbledore laughed again. "I suppose you've been waiting for that letter for a while, my boy."

"Have I," James said in a hushed tone. He smiled widely at the Hogwarts crest on one side of the envelope. "I'm so excited about school, I've been wanting to go ever since forever, I was just out in the yard playing in my tree house when Mum—" But James fell silent as he turned over the letter to see his name in the address spot. But instead of _Mr. J Potter_ inscribed on the paper, Dumbledore's hand had written something else.

_Ms. L Evans_, the envelope read.

"What is it, son?" Dumbledore asked, helping Mrs. Potter cap some of the other vials.

James felt like he was on the verge of tears. This wasn't his letter. He wasn't getting one. This L. Evans person got to go to Hogwarts and James didn't. Why was life so unfair? "This—this isn't mine," James said, his voice trembling a little.

Dumbledore silently took the envelope from James. When he saw the name, he laughed again. "So it isn't," he said, and rummaged around in his box some more. "I'm sorry, I'm visiting young Lily Evans just after this and I think I handed you her letter by mistake. Here we are," he said, and drew out another envelope, this time with James's name on it. James excitedly ripped open the letter, and two sheets of parchment fell out.

HOGWARTS SCHOOL

_of _WITCHCRAFT _and_ WIZARDRY

Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore

(_Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,_

_Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards_)

Dear Mr. Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall,

Deputy Headmistress 

"Excuse me, Professor," James finally said, "but today is August 1. We—I mean, I am—a day late."

But Dumbledore winked at James and said, "Don't worry about that, Mr. Potter. I knew I'd be delivering the letter to you personally, so I've got everything under control." He smiled at James, who was busy reading the rest of his letter. He pocketed Lily's letter, picked up his box (which was now filled with glass vials of BERP), and said, "Thank you very much, Mrs. Potter. You'll have the entire living population of elves cured in no time."

"They're all ill?" James asked, looking up from his paper.

"No, no, of course not," Dumbledore said with a chuckle. "Well, have a wonderful evening."

"You, too, Professor," Mrs. Potter said with a smile, walking him towards the door.

"And I shall see you, Mr. Potter, on September the first." Dumbledore smiled again, his eye twinkling, and walked out of the room. A few minutes later, Mrs. Potter closed the door and walked back into kitchen, where she once again began slaving over the cauldron.

"Go tell your little friends to go home now, James, all right?"

James was still reading his letter. "What?"

"Your friends. Tell them it's time for them to go home."

James had completely forgotten about the other little boys in his tree house. "Okay," he told his mother, and went to go outside. He could still hear them giggling inside the tree house, but James stopped in the middle of the yard. He had his letter now. He was eleven years old, practically an adult. James couldn't be seen hanging around with seven year olds. What would the other Hogwarts kids say? James shuddered.

He placed his letter back inside the Hogwarts envelope on began to march towards the tree house. Something changed in young James Potter that day. He was better than those little children playing inside his tree house, he decided. And besides: it was going to be a whole year before he saw them again.


	7. Who Would Have Thought?

ATTN: Hogwarts coming soon, I promise!! Only a few more chapters. I'm planning on adding a chapter a day, so tell your FanFiction friends and spread the word.

Petunia was once again watching television (it was all she seemed to do nowadays, thought Lily) after dinner. Mrs. Evans had taken over the dish washing, and was in a thunderous mood after she heard Petunia complaining about the new color of her room. "We slaved over that room for weeks, Petunia Evans!" she had shouted, her face bright red as Petunia sulked. Mrs. Evans had stormed into the kitchen and demanded that Lily let her finish the dishes.

Lily, nodding, had run out of the kitchen and up into her room, where she had grabbed a deck of worn playing cards and started to do magic tricks. There was the one where she hid the card in the deck and then picked it out, but it wasn't the same when Petunia wasn't there. She played with the deck for a few moments, and then had an idea.

Ten minutes later, Lily crept down the staircase, her black cape billowing out behind her. Her mother was still muttering angrily when Lily snuck up behind the couch where Petunia was sitting. _This'll make her laugh_, Lily thought, and spread out the cards in her hand like a fan. The light cast Lily's shadow across Petunia's small body, and she sat up. But Lily was faster.

"Pick a card, any card!" cried Lily, and jumped out in front of Petunia, who shrieked loudly. Lily was quite a sight, in her father's too-large tuxedo, wearing white gloves and a silk top hat and a black cape, but Petunia realized what she was dressed up as.

A magician.

Petunia calmed down, still breathing rapidly, and sunk back against the couch and continued to watch television. "Go away," she said harshly.

"Petunia Evans!" her mother shrieked from the kitchens.

"Go away," Petunia hissed quietly.

"But, Tuney—"

"Go _away_!" Petunia screeched, just as the doorbell rang.

"I'll get it!" Mr. Evans cried, and got up from his seat in the office to open the door.

"I was just trying to make you laugh, Tuney," Lily said, her feelings hurt.

Petunia scowled. "Well, you can't, so leave me alone."

"Why are you so angry at me, Tuney?" Lily asked, and even though Petunia thought she should know exactly why she was angry, she didn't get a chance to answer her sister. Just then, Mr. Evans called from the doorway, "Uh, girls?"

Petunia reluctantly got up from the couch and shoved Lily out of the way. Mrs. Evans left the kitchen. Lily stood still for a minute, watching after Petunia. Suddenly, she heard her mother say, "Oh, my."

Lily frowned and ran into the hallway, her robe billowing out behind her. The figure in the door, Lily decided, was dressed almost as peculiarly as she was. His midnight-blue robes contrasted sharply with the orange in the setting sky, and his tall, pointed hat almost scraped against the door frame. There was a large cardboard box in his arms that rattled when he moved, and he had the longest beard any of the Evans family had ever seen.

"Do you know this man, Lily?" Mr. Evans asked his daughter. She had never seen him before in her life, but Lily smiled. She knew exactly who he was.

"You're from Hogwarts, aren't you?" she asked the old man standing in front of her.

The man smiled. "Why, yes. I am. How did you know?"

"Severus told me about you." Lily was still smiling, looking quite odd in her magician's outfit, but a loud and large scoff came from Petunia at the mention of the Snape boy. The old man looked at Petunia, as did Lily, but Petunia just left and went into the living room.

Unfortunately the old man and her family followed her. Petunia turned off the television reluctantly, and Lily took a seat next to her on the couch. The old man sat in the armchair across the girls, and Lily's parents sat on the couch as well.

"Well, first things first," the old man said, and put his box on the floor. He straightened up and addressed Mr. and Mrs. Evans and Lily. "My name is Albus Dumbledore," he said, "and I am headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." Mrs. Evans looked shocked, and her husband was stiff. Albus Dumbledore reached into the pocket of his robe and drew out a slightly crinkled letter and handed it to Lily.

She took the letter from him shyly. "In that letter is your list of school supplies and details explaining when school starts," he told Lily. He turned to her parents. "Lily has been accepted to come to our school. It is one of the best wizarding schools around, Mr. and Mrs. Evans, and, believe me, it is an honor that Lily has been accepted there. You may have noticed this in Lily, but around this age, the magical talents of young witches and wizards start to become noticeable."

"Magical talents?" Mrs. Evans replied, a bit less weakly. She looked as if she was about to smile, as if it was a good thing Lily had been accepted.

"Yes," Dumbledore said. "Of course, since you are Muggles, or non-magical folk, I had to come to explain to you how the school works. We have all sorts of young witches and wizards at our school: pure-blood, half-blood, and Muggleborns, such as Lily. Although there have not been as many Muggleborns at Hogwarts as there are going to be this year—"

"Severus says it doesn't matter whether I am Muggleborn or not," Lily interrupted.

Albus Dumbledore smiled at Lily, a twinkle in his blue eyes. "He is absolutely right."

Mr. Evans spoke up. "Well," he said, a little flustered but nonetheless pleased. "Our Lily. A witch!" He laughed, and Mrs. Evans smiled. "Who would have thought?"

Albus Dumbledore continued. "Hogwarts is sort of like a boarding school, you could say. Term starts September first," he pulled out a tiny slip of paper, "and Lily will need to meet at Platform 9 ¾ at King's Cross Station in London. A faculty member will be around to tell you how to get through the barrier. This is her ticket." Dumbledore handed Mrs. Evans Lily's train ticket. "Lily will need a trunk and a set of school robes. It is all on the list." He motioned to the letter, and Lily pulled out the second sheet of paper.

HOGWARTS SCHOOL

_of_ WITCHRAFT _and_ WIZARDRY

UNIFORM

First year students will require:

Three sets of plain work robes (black)

One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear

One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar) ("Dragon hide!" Lily exclaimed when she read this aloud)

One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings)

Please note that all pupils' clothes should carry nametags

COURSE BOOKS

All students should have a copy of each of the following:

_The Standard Books of Spells (Grade 1)_

By Miranda Goshawk

_A History of Magic_ by Bathilda Bagshot

_Magical Theory_ by Adalbert Waffling

_A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration_ by Emeric Switch

_One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_

By Phyllida Spore

_Magical Drafts and Potions _by Arsenius Jigger

_Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_

By Newt Scamander

_The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection_

By Quentin Trimble

OTHER EQUIPMENT

1 wand

1 cauldron (pewter, standard size 2)

1 set glass or crystal phials

1 telescope

1 set brass scales

Students may also bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad

PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST YEARS

ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOM STICKS

"Wow," Lily breathed when she finished reading the paper aloud.

"But where are we going to find all these things?" Mrs. Evans asked. "And how are we going to pay for them?"

Dumbledore only laughed. "Don't worry," he said, pulling out a bag that clinked considerably. "Hogwarts has a fund for those students who are unable to pay for their school supplies. Like a scholarship," he said to Mr. and Mrs. Evans's terrified faces. "And tomorrow I'm sending over Hagrid, our gamekeeper, to take you all to London to buy Lily's school supplies." He smiled.

The room was silent. Mr. Evans took the letter from Lily and scanned it over.

"Of course," Dumbledore added, "you are the parents. Lily does not have to go."

For a few frightened moments, Lily was afraid her parents were going to deny her entry to the school. They exchanged anxious glances. "No, no," Mrs. Evans said, "of course we want her to go." She smiled at Dumbledore, who smiled back and then stood up.

"Wonderful," he said. "Now, if you don't mind, I have somewhere to be." He picked up his box, the insides clanking noisily.

"What is inside there, sir?" Lily asked.

"Bottles of BERP," he said.

"Burp?!" she asked incredulously.

Dumbledore laughed. "Not like a belch, no. B-E-R-P. Boils of Elf Removing Potion. The elves at the school have all come down with a communicable case of boils and I needed a potion to get rid of them. I just went to one of your soon-to-be-classmate's home to pick these up."

"Whose home?" Lily asked.

"A certain Mr. James Potter," Dumbledore said with a wink. Lily laughed, but she was not quite sure why he winked, and Dumbledore said, "Hagrid will be here at around twelve o'clock tomorrow, give or take. Thank you for your time."

"Thank you!" Lily and her parents chirped.

Dumbledore led himself to the door, and with another clank of his box, left the house. Lily and her parents immediately started chattering on about how excited they were, but Petunia quickly got up from the couch and ran outside. She needed a letter, too; didn't the old man know that?

She flung open the door and ran into the empty, dark street. She looked around wildly for the old man, but he was gone. "Excuse me!" she yelled. "Excuse me, Mr. Dumbledore!" He couldn't have gone that far. But as Petunia ran along the empty streets, there was no trace of him.


	8. Diagon Alley

ATTN: Finally, we're _this_ much closer to Hogwarts. Only a few more chapters until then. I'm really excited about Snape's first night at Hogwarts. Hopefully you'll like his upcoming flashback.

James once again glanced in the window of Quality Quidditch Supplies, still seeing the Venus 7000 resting in the window. Oh, how he wanted it. But the letter said that first years weren't allowed their own brooms. Well, he had one, why couldn't he bring it?

James would find a way. He was sure of it.

His father hustled him along the busy streets, still dressed in the Muggle postman clothes. Diagon Alley was packed, with children and adults alike, all shopping for their school supplies. Younger children were with their older siblings, crowded in the Magical Menagerie, pressing their faces in on turtle tanks and it seemed as if hundreds of children were waiting in line at Fortescue's. James pulled on his collar, wincing in the heat. Ice cream sounded delicious.

Apparently, his father thought so as well. Reaching into his pockets, Mr. Potter pulled out a few silver Sickles and bronze Knuts and handed them to James. "Go stand in line," he instructed his son. "I'll run to Gringotts, it may take awhile. Get me a strawberry-pistachio cone, okay?" James nodded, and took off for the ice cream parlor, leaving his father to battle his way through the crowds.

James took his place last in the line that stretched out the door, bouncing the Sickles in his palm. In front of James waited a short and squat pudgy boy that looked about eight years old. The boy was doing an antsy dance not unlike the one Viggy had performed when he had his boils. James laughed, not bothering to be quiet, and the boy turned around.

James looked away, not wanting to draw unwanted attention to himself by talking to this boy. The boy gave James a smile, exposing large front teeth that resembled a rat's, and then turned back around. James waited in line for a few more minutes, the line inching up excruciating slow.

The boy kept turning around. The sun kept shining. James thought it was going to burst soon and set the entire world on fire. The boy turned around again. It got hotter (Was that possible? James thought.). Finally, when James found he hadn't gotten any closer to the door, the boy turned around again.

"WHAT!?" James yelled at the top of his lungs at the eight-year old. "What is it?"

The boy just kept smiling, his eyes running up and down James's body. James felt suddenly exposed. After a while, the boy spoke.

His voice was wheezy and faint. James imagined it was the type of voice a rat would have if a rat could talk. "Your hair's pretty cool."

James smirked, thinking of the untidy black mess that sat on top of his scalp. _Of course it is_, he thought. Any hairstyle condemned by James's mother was considered cool. He looked down on the eight-year-old, who couldn't stop smiling. "What?" he asked again.

"You like Quidditch?" the little boy asked.

James nodded. "Yeah."

"Me too." The line crept forward, but the little boy hung back and stood next to James. "But my dad says I'm not good at it." _Most likely_, James thought, wondering how the pudgeball that was this kid could ever balance himself on a broomstick. "You look as if you'd be excellent at it, though," the little boy said. James smirked again. He was. "What position do you like the best?"

"Seeker." James's answers were short and blunt.

"Cool, cool," said the boy.

The two stood in silence for a moment. Just then, a very petite little blonde girl came up to James and the little boy and tried to squeeze through. "Excuse me," she said, in a tiny, cute squeak of a voice. She looked up at James and smiled, and then stopped. "Hi," she said.

James looked around to see if she was really talking to him. She looked at least a year his senior, which meant that she was a whole twelve years old. He smiled. "Hey."

"You look really familiar," the girl said, and James felt a sudden desire to flatten his unruly hair. His hand floated up of its own accord, and began to flatten the black mop. The little boy looked worried as soon as he did this. "Aren't you the son of the woman who made the BERP potion?"

James smiled. "Oh, yeah," he said, scoffing as if it was no big deal. "My mum and I actually worked on it together. I added in an ingredient not in her recipe and it ended up working really good." James was still flattening his hair, and the little boy began to reach up to pull James's arm down.

"Yeah, we bought some for our house-elf, Denby," the little girl said, and pointed over to where a little family was sitting in the wrought-iron chairs of the ice cream parlor. A skinny little elf was fixing the napkin of a little boy. The other little boy, standing next to James, had started to whisper, "Hey, hey!" The little girl chattered on for a few more minutes, James still unsuccessfully trying to flatten his hair.

"No, stop, don't—" the little boy said, pulling at James's elbow.

"WHAT is it?" James said loudly.

The boy fell silent, and then said, "Your hair. It doesn't look as cool flat."

There was silence between the three. "Oh, I'm sorry," the girl said, looking embarrassed. "I didn't know you two were—" Her eyebrows raised in a suggestive manner.

"No, no!" James almost yelled. "No, we're not—"

"Not what?" the boy piped up.

"I'll see you later," the girl said awkwardly, and left to join he family.

James turned to the boy. "Why did you do that?" he asked through clenched teeth.

"Well, it doesn't!" the boy yelled again. "Now it looks like hat hair!"

Before James could snap back a reply, James's father, the armpits of his coat dark blue with sweat, approached the boys in line. "Only this far?" he asked, panting a little. James nodded. Mr. Potter nodded, and then caught sight of the little rat-faced fat boy. The boy smiled at Mr. Potter, who looked at James.

"Oh, Dad, this is—" James stopped short, realizing he didn't actually know the little boy's name.

"Peter!" piped up the little boy. "Peter Pettigrew!" He smiled some more, and Mr. Potter grinned down, too.

"It's nice to meet you, Peter. James and I are shopping for school supplies," Mr. Potter told Peter Pettigrew. "How long is it until you get to go to Hogwarts, Peter?"

To both of their surprise, Peter chirped, "This year!"

James and Mr. Potter exchanged glances. "How old _are_ you?" James asked, a little harshly.

"Eleven," Peter said, still smiling.

"Oh," said James, sensing an oncoming, unwanted friendship between he and Peter. "Nice."

About half an hour later, the three men were standing outside Ollivander's, where a fidgety Peter was trying to lick the ring of dried ice cream off his upper lip, where it had formed in the heat. James grimaced as Mr. Potter opened the tinkling door, berating himself for letting the little annoying boy follow them on their shopping. Peter convinced them he was all by himself, shopping for school.

Ollivander's was cold, quiet, and packed. As James squeezed into the shop after Peter, he noticed that Ollivander's now held only nine people, but one of those people was incredibly gigantic. He had a huge bushy beard and looked positively uncomfortable inside the tiny shop.

The giant-man huffed a little, and said to the little red-haired girl and black-haired boy he was standing with, "I think I'll go wai' outside," the giant-man puffed. "Here, all us adults can leave and let the kids shop for themselves." Then the giant-man and two people dressed as Muggles tried to squeeze their way past Mr. Potter, James, and Peter. Once they left the shop, Mr. Potter said to the boys, "I'll think I'll go too, you boys can take of this by yourselves," and left the shop, joining the three other adults just outside.

Mr. Ollivander was somewhere in the back. James could hear him rustling around, so he took a step towards the counter. Peter followed.

"Excuse me," a voice drawled, and James and Peter turned around to see who was speaking to them. It was the short, skinny little black-haired boy. James's first instinct was to laugh, so he did. Peter followed suit. The boy, who looked James's age (unlike Peter), stood slouchingly, drowning in a huge overcoat and a strange-looking smock.

"Excuse me," the boy said again, "but we were first in line." He motioned to the little redhead standing next to him. James smiled at the girl, who smiled back. Once again, his hand voluntarily floated up to check his hair, but instead of flattening it down, he took Peter's advice to heart and rumpled it up, making it look messy again.

The girl giggled a little, and the greasy-haired smock boy took a step closer to her. James wondered if they were related.

"We weren't cutting," Peter said, and the greasy-haired boy scoffed a little. James was about to retort something back at the boy, but Mr. Ollivander had approached the counter, only his white, tufty hair visible behind the boxes he was holding. He dumped them all on the counter and said in a cheerful voice, "Now, who's first?"

The greasy boy motioned for the girl to go first, but she stepped back. "You first, Severus," she said in a quiet voice. The greasy boy went up the counter, where Mr. Ollivander handed him a wand. "Try this," Mr. Ollivander said.

In the end, Severus had purchased a long, black, skinny, and very shiny wand. James noted that it quite resembled the boy. The red-haired girl was next, and James noticed the way the boy named Severus stared at her. _As if a boy like him has a chance with a girl like her_, James thought silently.

"Well, I've never seen you before, little girl," Mr. Ollivander said nicely to the girl. "And I remember everyone I have ever sold to."

The girl hesitated before saying in a quiet voice, "I'm Muggleborn, sir."

Mr. Ollivander smiled. "Wonderful."

After a few minutes, the girl purchased a medium-sized, cherry wood wand, somewhat resembling the dark red color of her hair. She looked positively delighted when handing Mr. Ollivander her money. The two children left quickly, the girl waving at the two boys while her friend Severus pulled her out of the shop.

Peter was next, and received a short, stubby little oak wand that matched the color of his pale face. James was last, and the two boys left the shop only minutes later, clutching new ribboned-wrapped boxes that contained their wands.

"Wonderful, wonderful," Mr. Potter said, looking pale from the heat. "Now, please let's get out of here before I pass out." The three men hurried from shop to shop, collecting their supplies. It took a long while in Madam Malkin's, because there were hardly any sizes for Peter, but the witch told the boy she'd set him his new robes in the mail and they left.

Soon, as James could see the set start to set over the stores, Mr. Potter announced everything on James's list had been bought and it was time for them to go home. Peter looked forlorn, but Mr. Potter tried to cheer him up.

"Don't look so sad, Peter," James's father said. "You and James will see each other on the train." At these words, Peter's face brightened considerably, and he was still stammering out his goodbyes to James and Mr. Potter when the barrier to Diagon Alley closed.


	9. Reading the Rough Drafts

"Weird," Severus breathed, watching the images flicker across the screen of the television as he sat on Lily's couch after getting home from their shopping expedition. "It's just like our pictures."

"Your pictures move?" Lily asked incredulously, coming over with a bowl of popcorn.

"Yeah," Severus said absentmindedly, staring the bowl of popcorn. "What this stuff?" he asked suspiciously.

"Popcorn!" Lily said happily, popping some into her mouth. "It's good, try it!"

But Severus abandoned the popcorn and continued to watch the TV. They sat there for a few minutes until Severus asked, "Where's Petunia?"

"At a friend's house," Lily said, still eating the popcorn that Severus had abandoned. "She didn't want to come to Diagon Alley with us. I think she was afraid of Hagrid."

Severus's chest expanded with a little "Pah!" of sarcasm. "Who wouldn't be?" he asked.

Lily frowned. "What do you mean?"

"He's huge!" Severus exclaimed, as if it was breaking news and not the first thing Lily had noticed when he had come through the door of their house. "What a monster!"

"He's _not_ a monster!" Lily retorted. The two children fell silent for a moment.

The images continued to flicker on the screen. Suddenly, Severus said, "Can I see your bedroom?"

Lily smiled. "Of course!"

She led him up the stairs, around the corner of the hallway. "This is the bathroom," she said, opening the door and flicking on the light. "And my mum and dad's room, and my room." She opened the door, and plain white walls, one of which had a few pictures of Lily and Petunia on it, greeted Severus. The comforter was pink, as was the rug. Severus smiled, though he had never really liked pink, but thought it suited Lily well.

As they were exiting, Severus caught sight of the closed door next to Lily's room. "Whose is that?" he asked.

"Petunia's."

Severus smiled knowingly at Lily and opened the door. "Oh, Sev!" cried Lily, but she followed him into her sister's room. Petunia's bedroom was bright yellow, exactly the opposite of what Severus would have expected to see, but it was very neat, tidy, and prissy, just like Petunia. Severus made his was over to the desk and started shuffling around papers.

"Sev, no!" Lily hissed, but Severus had already picked up a yellow envelope that resembled the one the Hogwarts letter had came in. At first, Lily thought it _was_ her Hogwarts letter, but as she took it from Severus, she saw Petunia's name written on it instead of her own.

"Has _she_ got a letter?" Severus asked incredibly. "No way. She can't go." Lily emptied the envelope, a single sheet of parchment falling into her hands. She was about to read it when Severus went, "Look at this." In his hands was a crumpled sheet of binder paper. Petunia's neat handwriting was scrawled across it.

"'Dear Mr. Dumbledore,'" Snape read. "'My name is Petunia Evans. My sister is Lily. I tried to talk to you after you left our house yesterday, but you were gone before I could catch you. I wanted to ask you for your permission to allow me to go to Hogwarts as well. You, see, I can't leave Lily all by herself at this school where she doesn't know anyone. I think it would be best if I accompanied her, if only for a short while.'" Snape set down the letter, and picked up another. It said almost the exact same thing, but with cross-outs and underlines. Petunia had about four drafts of these letters.

"Why'd she want to go with you?" Snape asked, and Lily picked up the letter from Hogwarts and read it.

HOGWARTS SCHOOL

_of_ WITCHRAFT _and_ WIZARDRY

Dear Miss Evans,

Thank you for your letter concerning your sister. She will be a wonderful addition to our school. It is very, _very_ safe here, and you have no reason to worry.

In regards to your request, I must say this. However much we would love your presence at Hogwarts, I must deny your entry. All students at Hogwarts have some sort of magical ability. While we watched Lily, we discovered that she, despite being born from non-magical parents, does have some of that magic.

However, we watched you as closely as we did your sister, and unfortunately there is no magical ability in you at all. I'm very sorry.

But please, do not worry about Lily. We will teach her all we possibly know, and you will be very proud of her when she returns home this summer.

Sincerely,

Albus Dumbledore

Headmaster 

"How'd she get a letter to Dumbledore?" Severus asked.

"I don't know," said Lily, still in awe that Petunia would care about her enough to ask if she could go to Hogwarts, too. Just then, they heard the front door open and Petunia's voice called out, "Mummy, I'm home!"

"Quick!" Lily said, and stuffed Dumbledore's letter back into its envelope. Severus snatched up the fallen letters and replaced them in the wastepaper basket. They closed Petunia's door with a _click_, and ran downstairs, right into Petunia.

"Oh," Petunia said snottily, looking down her nose at Severus. "You're here."

"Yes," he spat back, "I am here." He smiled coolly at her, and then turned to Lily. "But I've got to go home now."

Lily walked him to the door, aware of Petunia's burning glare on the back of her neck. When he had left, Lily said to her sister, "Can't you be nice for once?"

Petunia frowned deeper and said harshly and bluntly, "No."


	10. Potter, Evans, Snape

"Mum, mum, _please_," James said, struggling to get out of his mother's grasp as she tried to kiss him. "I'm going to be all right."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, dropping James's arm and wiping away at her eyes. James thought of taking the opportunity to run and board the scarlet train, which sat chugging on the platform, but he knew his mother would never forgive him if he did. "I can't believe my little boy is going off to Hogwarts already!"

Mr. Potter sighed reminiscently. "I remember my first day at Hogwarts. Hagrid was there then, too." He smiled, tearfully as well, at his wife and put his arm around her. "I met your mum there, did you know that James?"

James nodded his head. He knew very well. He was tempted into pulling out his newest issue of _Which Broomstick?_ while his father told the story again, but he didn't. However, James heard that raspy little voice again, and was somewhat relieved and angry at the same time.

"James, James!" Peter Pettigrew called, running to where James stood with his parents. "How's it going?"

"Good," James said reluctantly, giving a look to his father, but Mrs. Potter was utterly delighted.

She smiled widely and exclaimed, "Now who is your little friend, James?"

"Peter Pettigrew," James said, with a bored note in his voice. "He's in my year."

Mrs. Potter looked a little shock, obviously fooled by Peter's height, but exclaimed, "Oh, how nice! I suppose I don't have to worry about you being away all that much, now do I? Since your friend Peter will be with you. How nice." She smiled again, but still tearful, and hugged Mr. Potter around the waist. "Well," she said, her voice choking, "you'd best be off then!" She kissed James's cheek one last time and hugged him tightly. Mr. Potter picked up James's owl's cage and handed it to him. Godric, James's tawny owl that he had named after the founder of Gryffindor, opened a sleepy eye to look at James.

"Wow!" Peter exclaimed, as if he had never seen an owl before.

A young wizard dressed in scarlet robes that matched the train came up to James and took Godric from him, and another came to wheel James's trunk away. James turned to his mother and father and said with a smile, "Bye."

His father walked him and Peter to the stairs of the train. Peter hopped on first, and James followed. "Now you have a good term," his father said, "and don't get in to much trouble and _make sure to write_. Or else your mother won't stop crying."

James laughed, "She'll be so busy with BERP that she probably won't remember me when school ends."

Mr. Potter laughed too, and gave James a little push. "We'll see you at Christmas," he said.

"See you, Dad." James turned and went to follow Peter onto the train. James pushed past Peter and elbowed his way through the crowd of children on the train, trying to lose him in the crowd, but when James found a half-empty compartment and tried to close the door, Peter's foot got caught in the door and held it open. James sighed, and threw himself down on a seat across from a tall, shaggy-haired boy and a skinny, very pale boy.

"Good thing I caught up with you," Peter panted as he plopped down next to James, who was waving to his parents through the window. Peter saw them and began to wave as well. James could see Mr. Potter laugh. "There's a lot of kids on this train."

James didn't answer, but pulled out his copy of _Which Broomstick?_ and began to read. Peter continued to ramble, and the tall, shaggy boy across from James asked, "You play?" and gestured to the magazine.

"When I get the chance," James said, grinning. The shaggy-haired boy grinned back, and spread out as far as he could on the seat. Just then, the train gave three whistled and began to move. Peter let out an excited squeal, and the dark-haired boy laughed at him. James waved to his parents again, and then settled back into his magazine.

"Me, too," the boy said again. "What position?"

"Seeker," said James. "I wanted to bring my broomstick, but it wasn't allowed."

"Ha!" said the boy. "I wouldn't have let that stop me." James grinned. A rule-breaker, just like himself. The boy looked as if he would make a good friend.

The rule-breaker twisted to look at the pale boy next to him, who, James noticed, had incredibly good posture and looked as if he had never broken a rule in his life. "You play?"

"No," said the pale boy. "My mum doesn't allow it."

James frowned. "Hey!" he exclaimed, suddenly remembering where he had seen the pale boy before. "You were in Magical Menagerie, that one time I was there buying ants! You and your mum," James added.

The pale boy's cheeks turned pink. "I'm there a lot," he said. "I'm Remus. Remus Lupin."

James grinned. "James Potter."

The rule-breaker sat up with a smile. "Sirius Black."

"Cool," said James. The four sat in silence, until Peter piped up.

"I'm Peter. Peter Pettigrew!"

James shot a look at Peter. "I _know_," he said, a bit arrogantly. Sirius laughed, and even Remus managed a smile. The boys were silent for a while, and James suddenly heard a sniffing noise coming from beside the window. He looked up, and saw a small little girl staring out the window, and James could see her reflection wiping away tears.

"Hey," he said quietly, recognizing her as the little redhead girl in Ollivander's. "What's wrong?"

She didn't answer him, but kept on sniffing. Just then, the door opened and James also recognized the boy with the greasy hair who had accompanied the little redhead in the wand shop. He had abandoned his flowery smock and was already wearing his Hogwarts robes. Severus, as the girl had called him, walked into the compartment and sat across from Lily.

She glanced up, and then looked away from the boy. James watched eagerly, while the other boys were watching, uninterested, as Peter showed Sirius and Remus his chocolate frog card collection.

"I don't want to talk to you."

Severus looked confused. "Why not?"

Lily looked up, tears still streaming out of her eyes. James wanted to comfort her. "Tuney hates me. Because we saw that letter from Dumbledore."

Severus snorted sarcastically. He had thought it was worse than that. "So what?"

Lily stood up, indignantly, towering over Severus. "She's my sister!"

Severus fell silent, and Lily sat back down, wiping at her eyes. "She's only a—" But he caught himself, throwing a look towards Lily. "But we're going! This is it! We're off to Hogwarts!" James saw the Lily girl raise her head and give a little smile towards Severus. Severus said, in a hushed tone, "You'd better be in Slytherin."

James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter all looked up. A few cards fell out of Peter's hands. "Slytherin?" James repeated distastefully, remembering all the terrible things Mr. Potter had told his son about. "Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?" he asked Sirius.

But Sirius suddenly had a look of worry on his face, and he said quietly, "All my family have been in Slytherin." Peter smiled at Sirius, apparently to cheer him up, but Sirius just scowled in his direction and Peter scrambled to pick up the dropped cards.

"Blimey," James said with a laugh, so Sirius would know he was joking, "and I thought you were all right."

"Maybe I'll break the tradition," said Sirius, who had stooped to pick up a chocolate frog card and found it to be one of Salazar Slytherin himself. Severus and Lily had fallen silent, watching the boys. "Which house do you want to be in?"

Peter made to answer, reaching for the Slytherin card, but James cut him off. "Gryffindor, like my dad!" Severus snorted sarcastically. James looked up and shot him a look of disgust. "You got a problem with that?"

"Sure," said Severus, sneering at James. "Gryffindor's _fine, _if you'd rather be brawny than brainy—"

Sirius, who was trying to keep the card out of Peter's reach, interrupted Severus, "Where're you hoping to go then, seeing as you're neither?" James laughed loudly, and Remus gave a small "Ha!" of laughter, too.

But Lily was horrified. She stood on her feet, giving all four boys a look of such deep hatred that even Peter, who had hardly laughed at all, cringed. "Come on, Severus," she said.

"Oooo," James and Sirius mocked, James suddenly hating her for standing up for Severus. She got up and Sirius let her past, but James stuck out his foot when Severus tried to get out and sent him sprawling to the floor. Sirius howled with laughter while Remus looked a little uncomfortable. Peter laughed because James did.

Lily gave all of them the look again and ran out of the compartment, Severus at her heels. "See ya, Snivellus!" Sirius called, throwing Peter's Slytherin card at Severus's back. He got up and slammed the door, almost tripping over Peter, who had dived to the floor to pick up the fallen card.

Peter scrambled back into his seat, Sirius and Remus and James all grinning, knowing that the start of a very tight friendship had just formed. Peter tutted quietly as he tried to bend the corners of the Slytherin card back into place, and Sirius asked him, "Why do you even have that card, anyway?"

Peter looked up innocently, and said, glancing back and forth between the three boys, "It's for my collection."

James laughed and settled back into his seat.


	11. I See London, I See France

Hogwarts, at last! Finally we get to see the castle. Snape's chapter is next, I think it's absolutely gorgeous and is one of my favorite parts. I hope you like it. :)

* * *

Lily found herself standing in front of a very large portrait later that evening. She was still angry with the four boys she had met in the train earlier that day, one of which, the boy with messy black hair, kept turning around and looking at her. She was standing with her fellow Gryffindor first-years just outside what, one of the prefects had said, was the entrance to Gryffindor tower. 

"What are we waiting for?" Lily whispered, leaning over to the girl who stood net to her. She had short, blonde hair and a round, cheerful face, and Lily had taken to her immediately.

"The password, I think," the blonde girl, whose name was Alice, said. Lily studied the painting for a while. A very short, very fat (Lily hated using that word, it was so discouraging, but there was no other word to describe the painting) lady in a pink dress was smiling at the lot of them.

"This is the entrance to Gryffindor tower," said the boy prefect who was tall and very professional looking. Lily sighed. It was the third time he had said that. The prefect nodded to the girl prefect, who said loudly and clearly to the Fat Lady, "Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus." The painting of the Fat Lady swung open to reveal a very large hole, perfect for climbing through.

"What?" Lily asked confusedly as the prefects began to herd the children through the portrait hole.

"It's the Hogwarts motto," Alice explained, and the two girls were pushed forward by the prefects. Lily found herself standing right behind the boy she had met on the train. "'Never Tickle A Sleeping Dragon.'"

"_That's_ the motto?" Lily asked, giggling in spite of herself. Alice laughed, too, and nodded. Alice climbed into the portrait hole and Lily was ready to follow, except for the fact that a certain messy-haired boy was standing in her way, not moving.

"Excuse me," she said in an exasperated voice, not unlike the one Severus had used on the very same boy while they were in Diagon Alley.

The boy whipped around, half-surprised and half grinning. Lily scowled. His was a stupid smile, like the ones boys at her old Muggle school used to wear right before the teacher sat on the whoopee cushion. "I'm sorry?" he asked.

Lily heard some groans behind her and a distant voice say, "What's the hold up?" The two prefects were already inside and there was no one out there to help the flow of traffic. "Please move," she told the messy-haired boy.

He laughed, and held out a hand. "I'm James."

"Please move," Lily repeated. How she could have seen anything but arrogance in this idiotic boy who held up the _entire_ long line of Gryffindor first years, she didn't know. She should never have listened to her mother when she had told Lily to "never judge a book by its cover." But the boy—James, as he said he was called—didn't move. "Move, please!" Lily said, and finally elbowed him out of the way and climbed into the hole.

James just stood there, watching her with a smile.

Lily sighed as she climbed out of the portrait hole and into the common room, but her breath was caught as she saw the grandeur of the room. The large, roaring fireplace looked anything but indifferent to Lily, who was cold after her trip across the lake. The large, squashy armchairs looked perfect for studying or falling asleep in. All the tapestries were red and gold and everything looked so beautiful—

But Lily frowned. If she had gotten her way, Severus would be looking at all this too. Lily wondered what Sev was doing, where his common room was. He was her only friend so far, and he was God knows where in who knows what section of the giant castle.

The prefects took to the front of the room after all the first years had gotten inside. The tall, boy prefect said in a pompous sort of voice that Lily didn't really care for, "This is the Gryffindor common room. No one else is allowed in here except for us Gryffindors. Students of all ages meet here to study and have a nice time." Lily, however, was very doubtful as to whether this boy even knew how to have a good time. "Boys' dormitories are up the stairs to the left of the room, and girls' are to the right." And with those words, the girl prefect, who looked a great deal nicer than the boy, rounded up all the first year girls and took them up the stairs.

Lily was halfway up the stairs when the portrait hole burst open and she heard two loud shrieks. A girl and a boy, both very freckled and very redheaded, ran inside the common room, laughing. The boy ran after the girl, calling, "Molly! Molly, come on!"

Molly, a short, cute little thing who was several years older than Lily, cried out, still laughing, "Oh, leave me alone, Arthur!" She dashed up the staircase Lily was still climbing, looking over her shoulder at the boy.

The boy, however, was still following Molly. He leaped the staircase, taking two steps at a time, and the minute his foot hit the sixth staircase, Lily, and all the other girls on the staircase, let out a shriek. The boy cursed, and Lily felt herself sliding down the suddenly smooth surface of the staircase. She tried to grab onto the railing, but it slipped through her fingers and she went tumbling down the staircase, her head slamming into Arthur's stomach.

She felt a strange breeze around her crotch area, and when she sat up, she found she couldn't see anything because her skirt had flipped over her head. Lily turned bright red all the way to the roots of her hair, and pulled down her skirt hastily, amidst snickers from the older (and younger) students of Gryffindor.

She felt tears prickle her eyes and saw Alice's hand reached down to pull her up. Lily stood up, still red, and saw Alice at the top of the stairs. _But how could Alice be holding my hand at the same time?_ she wondered. When she looked up at the face of whose hand she was holding, she blushed with anger instead of embarrassment.

That James boy, who had been so nasty to Sev, was still holding her hand. She yanked it out of his grasp, scowling at him. James's smile faltered, and his hand hung in midair. Lily whipped around, her hair smacking James in the face, and ran up the staircase, which had now morphed back into its original state.

Tears began to sting her eyes once again, and Alice wrapped an arm around Lily's shoulder and held out a handkerchief embroidered with a scarlet "A". Alice led Lily into the first year dormitory, and shut the door quietly. Lily fell onto a bed, not caring whose it was, and began to sob. Hogwarts was not turning out how she thought it would be.

"Shh, shh," Alice said, and Lily felt her reassuring pat on her back. "Don't cry, Lily."

But Lily continued to sob, and was finally able to sit up, a few minutes later. There was a dark spot on the red bedcovers where Lily's tears had cleaned it. She wiped at her nose with Alice's handkerchief, and nodded at Alice's inquiring look.

Mary McDonald, another Gryffindor first year, came over to sit next to Lily. "Don't be embarrassed, it probably has happened to a lot of people."

"But—but—" protested Lily, and felt another wave of tears trying to burst their way through her eyelids. "Not on their first day!"

But Mary only smiled and took Lily's hand. "Even on their first day." And Alice nodded and took a seat on the bed next to Lily as well. Lily looked up to the doorway, a rustling sound catching her ears, and saw the girl prefect standing there, looking a little uncomfortable. If anyone should come and comfort her, make her feel more welcome on her first day of school, it would be a prefect. And yet it looked as if she was trying to sidle her way out of the room without being noticed.

The door clicked shut and the girls sat in silence for a moment. Then both Mary and Alice burst out laughing. Lily, watching her friends' bellies heave with giggles, caught the contagion and began to laugh, too.


	12. Be Careful Not To Blink

Severus Snape was lying quietly in his bed in the Slytherin dormitory, watching the shimmery green lights of water reflect on the ceiling and make shapes. Severus's mind began to morph them into pictures, things he recognized, places he had gone, and people he knew. Jonas Avery, a boy Severus had met earlier that day during dinner, snored loudly from the bed next to Severus and rolled his large body over, causing his bed to shudder with the weight.

Severus was still forming pictures out of the green light when his thoughts went back to earlier that day. Ever since he had woken up that morning, everything had started to go downhill. His father was drunk, as usual, and decided to wake Severus up by the sounds of his retching. Severus had almost thrown up as well, until Mrs. Snape screeched that her son would never go to Hogwarts if he let so much as one drop of bile get onto his freshly laundered sheets.

Severus had looked down at those sheets and scowled. They were so dark and stiff from unknown substances that he had doubted if his mother's threat was even true. Nevertheless, he had thrown the covers off his frail little body, his heart pounding with excitement and already dressed in his Hogwarts robes. He had run a brush with missing teeth through his greasy hair, wishing it were a bit cleaner.

His thoughts, then, had jumped back to the day in Diagon Alley that he had spent with Lily, and that stupid boy and his pudgy little friend that showed up in Ollivander's. His eyes still on his own greasy hair in the cracked mirror, Severus remembered the, well, sheer _coolness_ of the other boy's hair, even when it was sticking up all over the place. Severus had scowled, remembering the smile with which he had grinned at Lily, and the niceness with which she smiled back.

For the first time (and certainly not the last), Severus Snape was jealous of James Potter.

Ugh, but that stupid little eight-year-old look-alike who was with the cool-haired boy (Severus _hated_ referring to him in this way)! Why he was there, Severus didn't know. And, frankly, Severus didn't care. But it still bothered him that he would run around the boy whose hair Severus admired so much. Severus was afraid, terrified at admitting it, but he was a bit jealous of that, too. No one had ever looked at Severus the way the eight-year-old did, as if Severus was the epitome of coolness and all that was good in the world. No one, not even Lily.

But Severus had slammed down the hairbrush at this thought, and ran back to his room, where he had smoothed down the bedcovers and grabbed the handle of his trunk, towing it out of his room and joining his mother and father in the closet that they called a kitchen.

Mrs. Snape, as even Severus was forced to call her because she had never told him her real name, was warming up a glass of milk for the still-hammered, a bit hung-over Mr. Snape. He was staring at the glass, a glazed look in his eye, and downed it in one gulp. The milky-whiteness, perhaps the only clean thing in the Snape hovel (for lack of a better word, Severus had decided), was gone in an instant, before Severus could even blink.

The boy had entered the kitchen, unknowingly crushing a cockroach beneath his too-large shoes, and set his trunk down with a _clunk_. Both of his parents had looked up, scowls on their faces (Mr. Snape's a little less vigorous became he was still so thick with drink). Severus had come over to the kitchen table, sat down across from his father, and had poured a glass of milk for himself. His only breakfast.

"Mother," Severus had said a little hesitantly to Mrs. Snape. She looked up, her eyes narrowing. Severus had decided to risk a smack with this intimate word, thinking she would allow it because he was leaving that day. "It's almost time to leave."

She didn't say anything, didn't nod or give any recognition to her son, but Severus knew she had heard him because she slung Mr. Snape's arm across her shoulders and attempted to get him from the table.

"No, no, no," had slurred Mr. Snape, trying to resist standing. "Won't be going, no we won't, we'll be staying home—" And Severus braced himself for what was to come.

Sure enough, it did. Mrs. Snape had continued to tug, tug, tug on Mr. Snape, and his arm had suddenly flew up and smacked her in the mouth. The kitchen was silent as Severus stared at his mother's mouth, which had begun to bleed. She didn't say a word, but picked herself up off the ground and traced the cut on her mouth with a sing-songish spell. She then turned to her husband, pointed her gnarled old wand at him, and said in a throaty voice that Severus recognized as the one she used whenever she was feeling some kind of emotion, "_Imperio_."

And Severus kept his head down, knowing not to say a word, all the through the Floo network and out of the Leaky Cauldron and onto the Muggle bus and into King's Cross station. Even when he had caught sight of Lily on Platform 9 ¾, he didn't speak, knowing he was as unwelcome in her family circle as he was in his own.

Then the train had whistled and he was herded onto the train without a word of goodbye from his mother or Imperiused father. But he had already forgotten about them. The large sense of dread that had filled him at his mother's once-again use of an Unforgivable Curse slipped away as he stepped onto the train, looking for any sign of Lily's red head, which had disappeared the moment he had torn his eyes away from her. He had blinked, that was it, and suddenly she was gone.

The train was clean. That was the first thing Severus noticed. There were no broken windows, no dirt and grime buried into the carpet. The second thing he noticed was the warmth. He wasn't just talking about temperature. His own house seemed always to be cold, even in the summertime, and the train was like a step into a sauna for Severus. But everything was just so cozy. Chattering kids (even though some were beginning to get on his nerves when he couldn't find Lily) and the smell of burning wood from the front of the train all gave Severus a sense of belonging.

He had never felt that before. He decided, right then and there, as someone pushed past him into a compartment, that even if there was no Hogwarts, he would be just as content to sit and stay on that train the rest of his life.

Suddenly, he felt a tug at his feet and almost lost his balance as the train began to pull out of the station. He heard a snicker and a boy's voice go, "Never been on a train, have you, twinkle toes?" Cheers and whistles from parents and little siblings were lost as the train "Toot, toot"ed, and Severus rushed to the exit. His little greasy head whipped around, searching for his parents, but his eyes fell on the exit of Platform 9 ¾. A little swatch of green cloth, identical to the cloak his mother had been wearing, had just disappeared through the barrier, and, with a sinking heart, Severus realized they had already left.

From there, Severus had found Lily in compartment 7C a half-hour later, after being shoved from numerous compartments during his search. His heart sunk as he recognized the boy from Diagon Alley and his little pudgy one-boy entourage (which he then noticed had been joined by two others), but he brightened, despite his already sour mood, when he noticed that Lily was not talking to the boy.

And Severus had good reason to be happy. James Potter, as Severus found he was called, was just as arrogant, self-centered, simple-minded, and bigheaded as Sev had originally thought him to be. And, now having joined forces with the Potter boy, was Sirius Black, an idiot just like Potter. Severus would have thought that Black, judging from the rest of his family, would have been the least likely person besides Severus himself to befriend Potter. _And what kind of name is _Black_, anyway?_ Severus had thought.

And his mood soured again as he and Lily had left the compartment, thinking, _But what kind of name is Snape?_ When he voiced the question to Lily, he thanked the stars for her when she had stopped, turned, and smiled. "A wonderful person," she had said. "Kind and caring and soon to be someone everyone will admire." She continued to walk, and Severus had followed just a step behind her when she added, "And my best friend."

His smile, Severus was sure, had reached from ear to ear, and he was surprised that the entire student population of Hogwarts was not blinded by its shimmering glory. And then he remembered he hadn't brushed his teeth in three days because the giant rat in the bathroom had once again stolen his toothbrush.

Things were going good since then, Sev had decided. Lily had even held his hand during the boat ride over to the castle. He had smiled even bigger that time, causing Potter and Black to call out from their boat, "Stop baring your teeth so much, Snivellus, we can see the bugs crawling!"

His smile had faltered, even more so when Lily let go of his hand in the Great Hall because it was sweating so much from nervousness. She had dropped his dry palm and wiped hers on her black robes, and Sev could hear her quick and shallow breathing. She was worried. He wasn't. Who, he thought, in their right minds, especially that old hat, would dare to separate Lily and him? He knew, he was sure, he was positive, that they would both end up in Slytherin.

He had blinked, and he lost sight of her on the platform. He had blinked, and she had let go of his hand. He had blinked again, and suddenly she was a Gryffindor.

_Damn that blinking!_ he had mentally roared to himself, not unlike the Gryffindor lion whose house Lily now belonged to. He watched in a stupor, everything around him crumbling away, as Lily walked over to the Gryffindor table. And when she turned back and sadly smiled at him, his heart broke in half. He didn't even cheer up with she gave Potter and Black the dirtiest looks he had ever seen her give. He almost didn't hear his own name being called.

"Snape, Severus." It was called, all right. Another student pushed Sev forward, and his legs trembled as he sat on the stool. When the hat was placed on Severus's head, he heard Potter snicker and Black say, "Ha ha, Snivellus!" in a triumphant, amused tone. He had sat there for a good thirty seconds after the hat had shouted, "SLYTHERIN!" into his ear. All he could think of was Lily, even as he was greeted with roars of cheers from the Slytherin table. As the Slytherin prefect, Lucius Malfoy, patted Severus on the back, Sev felt as if each pound was shoving his heart up his throat and any minute, it would land right on the table.

Throughout the whole meal, Severus hadn't touched a single thing that had appeared magically on his plate. He could only watch the back of Lily's head, her shining red hair bobbing up and down with laughter as she was entertained by some fellow first year Gryffindors.

Oh, Lily. Severus now stared at the swirling green lights as they formed a picture of Lily. He tugged up the covers to his chin, and a single tear tickled his cheek as it ran down and splashed onto the pillow.


	13. An Unlucky Friday

It was a Friday, the second of the school year. James was sitting at a table in the potions classroom, absentmindedly tapping his wand on the table, unaware of the sparks flying from the end of it. He was staring at the back of Lily Evans's head, which was shining even in the dim light of the dungeon. He scowled, still tapping his wand, as he saw her lean closer to the person who sat next to her, a skinny little grease ball named Severus Snape. Or, as James and Sirius liked to call him, Snivellus.

To the left of Lily were her two friends Alice and Mary, two Gryffindor girls that James liked quite well, but unfortunately they didn't like him any more than Lily did. It wasn't as if he had ever done anything to them, so James didn't know why they hated him, but they were talking facing away from Lily, so James could see their profiles. They kept casting strange glances at Snape and James could tell they didn't like him very much, either.

James kept watching Lily, and jumped a little when Sirius and Remus slid into the empty seats beside him, Sirius pushing Peter out of the way as Peter tried to squeeze in beside James. But Peter was overtaken by Sirius, who was a whole two heads taller than Peter. So Peter was left to the seat at the end of the table, next to Remus, who tried his best to cheer up Peter, who looked so crestfallen that he had once again lost a chance to sit next to his idol.

"Still mooning over her?" Sirius asked, casting a look at Lily. Remus gave a strangled sort of cough at the word "mooning."

"I'm not mooning," James retorted, his wand still tapping, and a spark flew over and caught on Peter's sleeve, causing him to fall out of his chair out of fright. The whole class turned around, almost all of the Slytherins snickering. So was Snape, James noticed, but even though Lily had turned around, her face was as still as a statue. He was glad she didn't laugh at his friend, and he smiled at her when he caught her eye.

She frowned again, her pretty little mouth pulling down at the corners. James sighed, and Sirius nodded. "Yup," he said, pulling out his potions book, "definitely mooning."

James placed down his wand just as the dungeon door opened and the teacher walked in. Despite their being at school two weeks now, it was still the Gryffindors' and Slytherins' first potions lesson. James wasn't sure if he liked the teacher when he first walked through the door. He looked cheerful enough, and had the beginnings of a potbelly, but he walked with a swagger in his step that caused James's mouth to set in a line.

"Good afternoon class!" the professor exclaimed in a happy voice, his tiny red lines smiling through his white beard.

"Good afternoon, Professor Slughorn!" the class chanted back, most referring to their schedules to remember his name. Professor Slughorn smiled again and picked up his role sheet, and began to call out names. Lily's name was called, and she straightened up, her hair quivering slightly, and raised her hand. Slughorn smiled at her, and then went on to calling names. Both Remus and Sirius lazily raised their hands, Remus's more from tiredness while Sirius was just trying to look cool.

Peter gave a squeak when Slughorn called his name. Once again, he almost fell out of his chair, earning a few more titters from the class. But Slughorn stopped just after calling James's name.

"Potter, James," he said, and gave a gasp. He smiled widely at James. "Well, students," he said, a bit pompously, "you may all have a little something to live up to in this class." James was confused, until Slughorn mentioned that he was the son of critically acclaimed potionist Jane Potter, James's mother.

"Oh, yes," James said, smiling, knowing Lily's eyes were on him. "I helped a bit, as well." James hoped that Lily would at least stop glaring at him so, now knowing that he had done _something_ to make the life of another a little easier. Even though it was an accident.

"Oh ho," exclaimed Slughorn, putting his clipboard under his armpit, "really? Well, I hope you don't put the rest of these students to shame, Mr. Potter." And from there, Slughorn assigned the class a potion for removing pimples.

"Maybe Snivellus should try it first," Sirius had burst out at the word pimples. "There's a particularly nasty one on his nose that Snivellus is just _itching_ to go away." Snape turned bright red at Sirius's words, for he had indeed been scratching his nose just as Sirius had spoken.

Lily was furious, and James could tell. Her face was tomato-like, and she gave Sirius a look quite reminding James of the one the four of them had gotten on the train. The entire class, however, had burst into laughter and even Slughorn gave a nervous smile.

"Oh, Mr. Black, you joker," he said. "But now, students, the cupboard is over there. Get to your potion-making!" And at these words, he had winked at James, who sighed. It wasn't the class that was going to have a lot to live up to. It was James himself.

James had wandered over to the cupboard, where he had accidentally grabbed onto the same jar of sea sponges that Lily was holding onto. He dropped it quickly, just as Lily did, and caused the live sponges to go flying to the floor. The shards of glass burst out over the floor, and James and Lily hastily dropped to their knees to pick up the sponges, which were trying to crawl away.

The first rule of a potioneer, James knew, was always to tell an authority if a mess had been second. Second, of course, was never to eat near a workspace. But when James made to call out Slughorn's name, he had looked up to see the teacher digging his hand in a jewel-encrusted box, and when the teacher drew his hand out of the box, James saw it was covered with the dust of yellow crystallized pineapple, a favorite of James's father.

James was still staring in horror at Slughorn when Lily asked him, "What are you staring at?" He looked at her, amazed she was talking to him, when Snape came over and tapped her shoulder.

"I'll clean up for you," he said, staring with a stony glare at James. Why did everyone hate him so? Lily nodded, and then got up and made her way back to her seat, pulling the chair in close to the table. James felt like he wanted to cry. Everything she did wanted to make James cry. He had only known her for two weeks, but he knew—he _knew_—he wanted to be with her forever.

Strong words for an eleven year old.

Snape's drawl broke into James's thoughts, making his heart jump wildly. He scowled as Snape began to talk, hating him. How in the world could Lily spend time with this idiot?

"Obviously, you don't know anything about potion-making, despite having a genius for a mother. You're always supposed to inform the nearest authority figure in your workspace when you have made a mess. Professor!" Snape called. James rolled his eyes. Of _course_ he knew, he was just so disgusted that Slughorn was eating. James made to stand up, a handful of sponges in one palm and a nice little clump of broken glass in the other. "And listen," Snape said in a quieter voice as Slughorn stood up and cleaned his own hand of the pineapple crystals. "Stay away from Lily."

Snape got up, leaving James shocked. He wanted to throw down the sponges (and maybe give the glass a chuck in Snivellus's direction), and march over to Snape and slug him in the face. How dare he tell James to stay away from Lily! James could do whatever he wanted; he didn't need Severus Snape, of all people, telling him who not to talk to.

But James's mouth curved into a smile as Sirius walked up. "What's going on, mate?" Sirius asked, a little wary at the grin that was on James's face.

"Just wait, Snivellus," James muttered, so that Sirius had to strain to hear him. "We'll see who gets to talk to whom." And James walked away, leaving Sirius standing in a circle of broken glass with a look of surprise on his face.

And for the next two hours (as that day was double potions with the Slytherins), James related everything Snape had told him and everything he was feeling towards the slimeball to Remus and Sirius, inadvertently leaving Peter out of the mix. Peter, however, knew they were telling secrets and tried his best to catch what James was saying. In the end, Peter ended up catching his sleeve on fire again, much to the humor of Sirius and James.

Slughorn rang the bell for the class to stop just twenty minutes before the end of class. And to James's and Sirius's disappointment (and also delight, because it gave them a good chance to laugh at Peter) Slughorn chose Peter Pettigrew, instead of Snape, to test the finished potions. Peter had his fair share of acne across his forehead, and was deemed the perfect specimen.

Jonas Avery, one of Snape's classmates, had his potion tested first. To Peter's horror, Avery's potion caused Peter's whole face to be covered with acne, and the even reached down his neck. The entire class roared with laughter, at both Avery's stupidity and Peter's pimples, while Slughorn frowned, made a mark on the paper, and caused Peter's new pimples to vanish with a tap of his wand.

Soon, the majority of the class went, except for Remus, James, Lily, and Snape. Almost everyone had caused new spatterings of pimples to appear across Peter's forehead, and even Sirius had managed to bewitch his potion so that the pimples spelled the word, "RAT".

Remus was next, and James was pleasantly surprised to see that Remus's potion caused the entire phrase to disappear from Peter's face. Remus grinned widely, and Slughorn smiled. James was next, and he was positive his mother's potions talents had passed to him during the birthing process.

But to his dismay, James's potion was the worst in the class. Even worse than Avery's! James's supposed pimple-curing potion caused pimples to break out almost everywhere on Peter's body, and Peter's legs crossed, him doing that dance that James had first seen him do in Diagon Alley.

"Sorry, Peter," James said, meaning every word of it. Slughorn made a "tut, tut" noise, and James went to go sit back at his seat, his face red.

"Obviously, James was skipped over when the talent gene was passed down in his family," Snape said with a sneer, and James suddenly heard a chair scrape against the stone floor and Lily's scream. Before he knew what had happened, Sirius was across the room, a large fist around Snape's throat, who was steadily turning purpler.

"No, no, stop!" Lily screamed, tears pouring down her face. But even before Sirius could let go, a large bang was heard and Sirius was sent flying across the room. He knocked into a table of anxious-looking Gryffindors, and was hit on the head with one of their full cauldrons.

James looked at Snape, who was standing, with Lily at his side, with his wand pointed in front of him and at Sirius. James threw back his chair and lunged at Snape, breaking out of Remus's grasp. Snape dropped his wand out of shock, and James, amidst shouts from Slughorn and Lily, pounced on Snape, beating him repeatedly with his fists.

Snape tried to fight back, and James suddenly found himself pushed to the floor, and saw Remus standing in the middle of him and Snape. James smiled, and at a slight pain, reached up to find that his lip was bleeding severely. A black eye was forming on Snape, and Sirius was still dazed from the smack into the table, his whole body covered with pimples.

"You four!" bellowed Slughorn to Sirius, Snape, James, and Remus, picking Sirius up by the collar. "Detention, in my office, tomorrow night!" And from there, the class proceeded as normal—well, normal enough. "Miss Evans," Slughorn said, only his voice giving away the fact that he had just been frightened out of his mind, "please bring your potion." Lily came up to the front, avoiding the gaze of anyone who looked at her, and shyly handed her vial to Slughorn, who uncapped it and gave it to Sirius to drink.

Lily's potion was one of the very few that worked. In a moment, all of Sirius's pimples were gone, only a small amount of little spots that resembled freckles remaining. Lily grinned widely at Snape, who gave her a thumbs-up.

"Very, _very_ well done, Miss Evans," said Slughorn with a smile. He marked his sheet of paper once more and Lily returned to her seat. Now only Snape remained. He handed his vial to Slughorn, who looked down on him thunderously and uncapped it. He handed it to Peter, who looked incredibly anxious, just wanting to get out of that classroom, pimple-free.

James let out a sigh of disappointment. The moment Peter swallowed the potion, every single one of Peter's acne was gone, even the strip across his forehead he had begun with. His skin was pristine, and Peter ran a hand over it, surprised to see that it felt just like a baby's bottom. Snape's face lit up, and Lily hugged him.

Just then, the bell rang. "You idiots!" Remus suddenly burst out, slamming his potions book closed. "Now we all have detention!" But James wasn't listening. Just as Snape walked by, both Sirius and James turned to face him. James's wand shot out sparks, and Snape grabbed Lily's hand and quickly pulled her out of the classroom.

"Yeah, Snivellus, you'd better run," called Sirius to Snape's back, but the picture of Lily's hand in Snape's was forever branded into James's mind.


	14. A Balanced Breakfast

Thanks for all the awesome reviews, everyone. Not only for this story, but for my JBro spoofs as well. I'm glad you all like them. But, I must warn you, this chapter is kind of slow, it just adds some transition between class and detention. Bear with me. My most favorite and action-acked chapter is coming up soon.

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Lily was sitting at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall the next morning, picking at her scrambled eggs, too worried to eat. Yesterday afternoon, Severus had almost been killed by that Potter boy and his friends during Potions class. She was even surprised that Remus Lupin, James's usually calm buddy, had jumped into the fight. She got along with Remus much better than she did with James and Sirius and Peter, but she couldn't bring herself to even look Remus's way.

He was sitting just a few seats away, his unusually loud voice carrying over to where Lily was sitting with Alice and Mary. They were having a late breakfast that Saturday morning, and had been joined by the group of boys that Lily so detested. She had even heard that they had made a name for their little band. The Marauders.

Lily rolled her eyes and listened to Remus's shouting. "—how you could have done something so stupid," he was saying, "and now I've got to give up _my_ Saturday night because I was breaking up the fight!"

Sirius snorted. "As if you or any of us have anything exciting to do on a Saturday night. Oh, wait. James does." James looked confused, but Sirius continued. "What is it, mate, your tenth night of the 'Let's Stalk Lily Evans' campaign?" He laughed, and so did James. Lily blushed furiously.

"I'm not stalking her," James retorted. "Besides, she's always hanging out with Snivellus, so it's not like I get a chance to talk to her."

Lily frowned, still staring. But Sirius had looked up and caught Lily looking. "Don't look now, mates, but Lily Evans herself is looking this way." The four eleven year olds looked up at a shocked, deer-in-the-headlights Lily. The four raised their hands and gave a wiggly sort of wave towards Lily, all in unison. Sirius's was dripped in sarcasm; Remus's was genuinely friendly; Peter's was a bit confused; while James's was—well, Lily didn't know what it was, but she didn't like it. It scared her a bit.

"Come on, let's go," she said suddenly to a digesting Alice and Mary, who scrambled to clean up as Lily dashed out of her seat. But as she hurried down the aisle, hearing James's and Sirius's laughs behind her, a pale, freckly hand caught her arm and towed her to a stop.

Lily found herself looking into the face of none other than Arthur Weasley, who was happily eating breakfast with his girlfriend, Molly. Lily blushed unknowingly, the memory still fresh in her mind from when she had unpurposefully exposed her undergarments to Arthur—along with the rest of the Gryffindors. "Hey," Arthur said, and Molly turned around to look at Lily. "I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to talk to you before, but you're always scampering off so quickly to places. I wanted to apologize for embarrassing you."

By this time, Alice and Mary had caught up to Lily, Mary breathing heavily from running down the hall. Lily didn't smile, but appreciated Arthur's apology. She nodded.

"Merlin's pants, Arthur!" Molly exclaimed, smiling kindly at Lily. "You embarrassed her so much she still can't talk to you."

But Arthur didn't laugh at Molly. "I didn't mean to make your first night so miserable." He added in a whisper, "I would have cried, too, if anyone had seen my underpants my first day." He smiled at Lily, who giggled a little, loosening her up a little bit. "Friends?" Arthur held out his hand with a hopeful look.

Lily smiled, and then grabbed Arthur's hand in a firm grip. "Friends," she told him.

"Great." He turned back to his breakfast and Lily continued to make her way out of the Great Hall.

The grounds were breezy that morning, and Lily had to keep her jacket closed with one hand to keep it from flying away. The entire world seemed bent; the trees, grass, and just about any vegetation on the ground were being pushed over by the wind.

Mary and Alice wanted to go back inside, and Lily left them, watching after them as they ran back to the castle. She, however, continued to walk towards the lake, the wind sending ripples of water over the usually glassy surface. She strayed away, however, from a certain beech tree that the Marauders usually occupied. Lily tried to distance herself from it as much as possible while still staying in the same area in which Severus had told her to meet.

She had not been waiting very long when Severus came trudging out of the castle. Lily could tell by the look on his face that he had not had a very good morning; in fact, according to his word, not very many of his mornings here at Hogwarts had been very good.

She smiled at him when he came to sit down beside her. Lily noticed a bit of scrambled egg in his hair and reached up to pull it out. "Hi," Lily said cheerfully, and Sev tried his best to do the same.

"Hi," he said with a grimace that Lily knew he was trying to make into a smile.

"What's wrong?" she asked him, slipping her arm through his. But Severus didn't speak for a while. He picked up a pebble and threw it into the lake, breaking the surface further. Lily thought she heard a shrill scream when the water broke, but she must have been imagining it.

"My detention's tonight."

Lily sighed. "I know. Why did you do it?"

Severus looked shocked. "Do what?"

"Hurt Sirius!"

Severus gave Lily a look she didn't like, as if she was stupid for not knowing. "Because Black tried to strangle me!"

Lily sighed. Thinking it through much more than Sev, she said, "He wouldn't really have hurt you. You're giving him the satisfaction he wants. He wants you to hurt him, so he has an excuse to hurt you back."

Sev scoffed disbelievingly. "You're not taking his side, are you?"

Lily stood up indignantly. "Of course not! I just wanted—"

"Do you like him?"

Sev had stood to his feet now, too. Lily stood in shock, blushing again, remembering the phrase Sirius had said about stalking her in the Great Hall. "That's—that's beside the point," she told her friend, sitting down. "I'm only eleven."

"Sometimes it seems like you're much older," muttered Severus, sitting beside her again, brushing windswept hair out of his face.

"Don't be silly," Lily told him, and put her arm through his again. "How's your weekend going?"

"Bollocks," Sev told her. "Stupid Mulciber and Avery were food-fighting this morning in the Great Hall and got eggs in my hair; did you see them?" His tone was annoyed and Lily shook her head guiltily. To be honest, she hadn't seen Sev at all that morning before this meeting.

But Sev didn't look too discouraged. He flicked out another piece of egg and the two fell silent, until they heard a chant break out right behind them.

"Lily and Snivellus, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g!" Lily turned around, and sure enough, Sirius and James were right behind them, waggling their fingers again. Peter was joined in with them, and Remus stood a ways off, looking uncomfortable but doing nothing to stop his three friends. Sirius plopped down beside Lily and tried to link his arm with hers, but when she refused, he cried out in a worried tone, "What, Lily, won't you let me hold your hand?"

Lily scowled, feeling on the edge of tears again. "Go away," she said hoarsely, wiping at her eyes. James didn't catch her doing this, or else he would have stopped. "Leave us alone."

"Did you hear that, James?" Sirius called. "Snivellus and Lily are an 'us' now!" He snickered, and so did Peter, but James looked a tiny bit unsettled when looking at Lily's face. But hatred for Severus didn't stop the Marauders from continuing farther. "What's for dinner tonight, James?" Sirius asked him suddenly.

"I don't know," replied James, this joke obviously pre-planned, "but I'm planning on using all the grease in Snivellus's hair to fry me some bacon!"

James, Sirius, and Peter roared with laughter, and to Lily's surprise, even Remus's lip curled in a smile. "Ohhhhh!" she exclaimed, and Severus pulled her to her feet.

"Come on," he instructed her, and together they ran away from the lake, leaving the four Marauders behind. Lily turned back a moment, to see James and Sirius giving each other high-fives. And with this look, she burst back into tears.


	15. J'ai été collé

So. I think this chapter is the proud owner of my favorite title so far, but I'm working on one now that comes in at a close second. _J'ai été collé_ (I hope I got all the accents right) is French for _I Had Detention_.

* * *

It was eight o'clock when Severus crept out of his dormitory, his hand high above his head, trying to keep from dripping hot candle wax on himself. He had scrambled about for a candle to light his way to the dungeon, since Slughorn had told them that in no circumstances were wands allowed. Sev wondered where Lily was, probably sitting snugly in front of the fire with that chubby Alice girl and her friend Mary—Sev didn't like them much, and they tried to avoid him when they could (and vice versa), but as they were Lily's friends he sometimes had to put up with them.

It was a long, cold walk from the Slytherin common room to Slughorn's dungeon. Sev grinned at the name; he would love to hang Potter and Black up by their ankles and shoot spells at them. But he sighed, remembering that he hadn't learned very many Dark spells yet. Avery and Mulciber had promised to teach him one that would make your toenails grow really long, but they still had yet to do so. Sev knew Lily wouldn't be at all happy that he was practicing Dark magic, but he didn't really have to tell her, did he?

He finally reached the dungeon, pushing open the door to see Lupin, Black, and Potter already standing by Slughorn's desk. "Late!" the three yelled in unison, laughing and slapping hands. The lamps on the walls were burning brightly, and Slughorn was once again rummaging through a box of crystallized pineapple.

Severus was about to tell him the second most important rule of potion-making, but Potter got there first. "Excuse me sir," Potter said with a smile, "but my mother always taught me never to eat in a potioneering facility."

Slughorn choked, and Severus thought, _What does that cad even know about potioneering, anyway?_ When Slughorn straightened up, he nodded at Potter, his eyes streaming, and put the box reluctantly away.

"Now, boys," Slughorn told them and beckoned for Severus to come closer. Sev set his candle down on one of the abandoned desks. "I was very disappointed with what happened yesterday in class, especially as it being the very first class I had with any of you. Before we begin our punishment, however, I would like you all to apologize."

_Apologize_. The word hung in the air like an invisible stone wall separating Sev and the Marauders. Never, _never_ in his entire life would he ever apologize to those idiots standing across from him. But they seemed happy enough to do it.

"I'm sorry, Snape." Lupin's tone was light.

"Sorry." Potter's word was brief.

"Yeah." Black didn't even bother to say it, but Slughorn saw his grunt as acceptable.

The room was silent as they all looked expectantly towards Severus. His face was still. It was never going to happen. Never.

"What the matter, _Sev_?" Potter asked, mocking the nickname with which Lily referred to him as.

"He looks like he's going to choke," Lupin said, in a mock-concerned voice.

"Mr. Snape…" Slughorn's tone was a warning.

Severus let out a strangled sound.

"Sorry, didn't catch that," Black said with an evil grin.

It took all of Severus's strength. "Sorry," he said bluntly. Potter and Black exchanged grins.

"Good," said Slughorn quickly, noticing the tension building in the room. "Let's get to work. From your spectacle yesterday afternoon, boys, you may have noticed that you created quite a mess."

"Nope, didn't notice at all." Black grinned. Potter tried to stifle a laugh.

"Anyway, boys," Slughorn continued. "You created quite a mess." He gestured to a strange-looking mold that was growing in a corner of the room, where Severus had sent Black flying yesterday. "After Mr. Snape threw Mr. Black into the corner—"

"I did not throw him!" Severus retorted, folding his arms over his chest.

"Yeah, you hexed him!" Potter shouted, taking a menacing step towards Severus. Sev inched backwards, earning more snickers from the three boys.

"Both of you _shut up_ or you'll have another detention tomorrow!" Slughorn bellowed to them. With an annoyed flick of his wand, he conjured from the cabinet four buckets full of sudsy water, three sponges, and one mop. Each piece of cleaning equipment soared over to the boys and landed in their hands, with Black, Lupin, and Severus getting sponges and Potter landing with the mop.

"Clean up the mess," Slughorn said darkly, looking as if he was about to explode. From the corner of his eye, Sev saw Lupin sigh exasperatedly as Potter and Black slapped each other low fives. Slughorn waddled his way over to his desk and sat down, his hand immediately diving into another box of crystallized pineapple.

Sev made straight for the ring of mold, sitting on his knees and scrubbing the outside of the circles. He cast his eyes around for where the other three were, and turned around to see them staring at him from behind. Black was smirking, Potter had a raised eyebrow, and Lupin looked disgusted, as if he had just drunken some sour milk.

"WORK!" came a sudden burst of noise from Slughorn, which made all four boys jump. The three Marauders scrambled over to the ring of mold and began to scour it away. Sev continued to scrub under the piercing gaze of James Potter, who towered over him with his mop.

They had been working in silence for about twenty minutes when Lupin asked aloud, "What do you think Peter's doing right now?"

Black and Potter scoffed at the same time, continuing to scrub. Sev saw wistfully that muscles were beginning to form in Black's arms. "Probably playing with his dolls," Black retorted, and the three began to laugh.

"If you don't mind me asking," Sev said suddenly, a few seconds after they had stopped laughing. "If you hate Pettigrew so much, why do you let him hang out with you?"

The two Marauders looked up from their sponges and Potter stopped swishing his mop. Sev gave a look to the three as if to say, _Not like I really care or anything_.

"We don't hate him," Lupin told Sev, as if he couldn't believe Severus would ask such a terrible question.

"And anyway," Black continued, "we _do_ mind you asking, so please don't talk anymore." Luckily for Black and unluckily for Sev, Black's tone was so low that Slughorn couldn't hear the boy over the sounds he was making sucking on his pineapple. Sev made to get up and hit Black, but he heard Potter say, "Don't want to do that, Snape. Slughorn might hear, and then _you'd_ have another detention."

In hissed tones, Sev retorted, "And then I'd tell him how you three were goading me on."

"Goading, huh?" Black asked. "Someone's stretching their vocabulary."

"Yeah, and you're stretching yours just by speaking, Black!" Sev shot at him. Slughorn looked up from his desk and coughed loudly, causing Sev to jump and Potter to snicker. Sev went back to scrubbing the ring of mold, which had almost disappeared.

"Couldn't we just use magic to get rid of this?" Black asked, kneeling next to Sev with his sponge.

"Sure, Sirius," Lupin said brightly, smiling at his friend. "You tell me the spell, and I'll get rid of it!" His smile dropped, and Sev saw Black blush. Lupin was right: none of them even knew any cleaning spells. They had hardly been taught any spells at all.

"I don't see why we're doing this anyway," Sev added. "It _was_ entirely Black's fault."

"I'm sorry?" Black asked incredulously, but his following threat was drowned out by the sound of Slughorn's chair sliding backwards. Sev went back to scrubbing as the teacher's steps drew closer.

"Nice work, boys," Slughorn said, rubbing a hand over his belly. "The stain's almost gone. But I've had the sudden urge to go to the little boy's room. Your detention will be over in about fifteen minutes, so stay here until the little hand reaches the twelve," he pointed to the clock that hung over his desk, and Severus noticed it had many little hands. Sev was about to ask Slughorn which little hand would be touching, when he saw the Marauder's deathly glares in his direction. He then began to be afraid at what would happen once the teacher left. "So…fifteen minutes," Slughorn said, and then walked out of the classroom.

Once Slughorn had left, a snickering Potter turned to his pals and said, "It takes that idiot _fifteen minutes_ to freaking pee?"

"He could have a bladder problem," Lupin suggested with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Or he's constantly constipated," Black added with a grin, and earned laughs from his two friends.

"Look, could we _not_ talk about our Potions teacher's peeing habits?" Sev asked, continuing to scrub.

"Why, Snape, embarrassed?" Black asked.

"Besides, you always look so uptight it seems as if you've never took a whiz in your life!" Potter snickered, and Sev whirled around, wishing he had been allowed his wand. Unfortunately, Sev turned just as Black and Lupin threw their sponges at his face. The sudsy water blinded him for a moment, and he gasped for air and opened his eyes just as Potter shoved the mop in Sev's face.

By the time Sev cleared his eyes of the soap, he looked to see all three Marauders dashing out of the classroom. He stood up slowly, feeling tears prick his eyes once again, and gathered up the three fallen sponges, replacing them in the bucket, along with the mop. He looked up, and sat in silence.

Suddenly the door opened, and Slughorn walked back in, whistling. He looked up in surprise to see Sev still sitting on the floor, surrounded by a faded dark ring of color. "What are you still doing here?" Slughorn asked. "It was time to leave almost twenty minutes ago."

Sev looked up at the magical clock from his seat on the ground and saw that all seven of the little hands had gone past the twelve.


	16. In Which James and Lily Finally Hang Out

Here it is: my absolute favorite chapter so far! I am in love with this one. It may be a little cheesy, but staircases really do move that slow.

* * *

James, Sirius, and Remus ran. 

James was a good four feet in front of the two other boys, with Sirius just behind him and Remus a little bit behind Sirius. James turned around, grinned at his friends, and kept running.

Yes, they had left detention a bit early. All right, a _lot_ early. But Snape was probably still wiping the soap out of his eyes from when James shoved the mop in his face. James grinned. That was a moment he would never forget.

They rounded a corner, James calling, "Come on, hurry up!" Both Sirius and Remus sped up, Sirius passing James and skidding around the corner. His robes flew out behind him wildly, and James wouldn't have been surprised if they had slowed Sirius down. He somewhat resembled a giant black parachute.

The clock suddenly chimed eleven from somewhere in the castle. Sirius broke down into a walk, and James and Remus followed suit. "Why are we hurrying anyway?" Remus panted, stopping and bracing himself by putting his hands upon his knees. "We've had detention. We won't be in trouble for staying out this late."

"Too true," Sirius said, cocking an eyebrow and giving a mischievous look to James and Remus. James smiled back. "So what should we do?"

"Stay up," answered James at the same time that Remus piped, "Go to bed!"

James shot a look at Remus. "Oh, come on! Have a little fun!"

Remus looked as if he was struggling with himself for a moment, his leg twitching strangely. "Okay," he finally breathed, and James and Sirius high-fived each other. "But let's get our wands first." James and Sirius nodded, and the three set off for the Gryffindor common room.

Five minutes later, they were panting, standing in front of the Fat Lady. She was snoring loudly. "Hey," Sirius hissed at her, "hey!"

"Huh, what?" the Fat Lady asked, starting up and blinking drowsily at the three boys. "What are you doing out—"

"Dracodormiensnunquamtitillandus," Remus said quickly.

"Oh, fine, _don't_ tell me," the Fat Lady said hurtfully, but she swung forward on her hinges anyway. The three boys scrambled through, quickly and quietly running through the silent common room and dashing up the staircase. James and Sirius and Remus found their wands under their pillows, taking care not to wake Peter.

James and Remus were already out the door when Remus realized Sirius was not behind them. "Where—?" Remus asked James, and they suddenly heard the strangest noise come from inside the dormitory.

Sirius stood in the middle of the room, holding his noise. "Bless me," he whispered with a sheepish grin. And then Peter woke up.

"Where've youse been?" Peter asked groggily, rubbing his eyes and sitting up.

"Damn," Sirius breathed, and Remus and James groaned softly.

"Where're you going?" Peter asked, sitting up and slipping on his slippers.

"Nice rabbits," James scoffed, causing Peter to blush.

"Nowhere," Sirius added, crossing the floor to where the two other boys stood. "Go back to bed."

"No way," Peter whispered excitedly. "I'm coming too!"

"No, Peter!" James said, rushing down the staircase, trying to get away as fast as they could. "Go back to bed!"

"No, come on! I want to come!" Peter whined loudly, and Sirius slapped a hand over his face.

"Fine!" hissed Sirius in Peter's ear. "Just shut up!"

In the next ten minutes, the four Marauders were standing in front of a giant tapestry, staring up at it. Everyone except for Peter held their wands above their heads with the "Lumos" spell. "What should we do?" Sirius repeated.

"Leave it," Remus said, at the same time that James piped, "Knock it down!"

"What?" Remus asked incredulously. "I'm not knocking it down."

"Why not?" James asked. "Have some fun!" He grinned at Remus, and he and Sirius stepped forward and gave it a tug. After a few more, it came falling down in a hushed _oomph_ noise.

"I can't believe this…" Remus said horrifiedly. "Defacing school property."

"Oh, put a cork in it," Sirius said, and ran a few more steps away to pull down the other one. It also came down after a few pulls. James looked down the hallway, and saw two more tapestries down the way.

"Come on," he hissed, and ran to the one at the farthest end, skipping the one in the middle. He tugged at it, and it came tumbling down, falling over his head and dragging him under. "Sirius," he rasped from underneath the heavy velvet. "Remus!" He felt hands pull at the velvet, and James gulped in fresh air a few seconds later. He looked up to see Peter holding the tapestry. "Thanks guys," James said sarcastically, "I could have suffocated—"

But James fell silent, and Sirius and Remus were looking at it with smiles on their lips. Sirius's mouth was actually opened.

"Damn," Sirius whispered again, and James came to stand next to them, looking down the secret passageway hidden behind the tapestry, smiling widely.

"Come on," James said, and led them away, pointed his wand at the fallen tapestry and whispered, "Wingardium Leviosa." The tapestry floated up, and the other two boys with wands helped James refashion it onto the hooks near the ceiling. James pulled back the tapestry and vanished behind it, Sirius, Remus, and Peter close behind him.

The passageway was dark once the tapestry closed, and Remus hissed, "Lumos!" casting light onto their faces.

"How awesome is this?" James asked, high-fiving Sirius.

"Way awesome," Sirius breathed. Remus grinned in the dim light.

"Let's see where this leads," James suggested, and the four set off, Peter with a little whimper. "Don't be a baby," James shot at him.

"I'm not," Peter replied, his voice quivering.

Sirius laughed, and James saw him dodge out of the beam of light coming from Remus's wand. Sirius himself whispered, "Nox," and his own light vanished.

"Hey!" cried Peter.

James couldn't see Sirius anymore, and when a throaty voice suddenly went "HEY!" and grabbed Peter's shoulder from behind, James and Remus jumped, while Peter let out a howl.

"Shut up!" came the voice from behind Peter, and James heard that it was Sirius. James and Remus and Sirius began to laugh. They were nearing the end of the passageway when they heard a muffled voice coming from the other side of the curtain.

"Thank you _so_ much," they heard a girl's voice say.

"Of course, miss," another higher, squeakier voice piped.

"Sev'll be so glad you helped me." James frowned, and turned to see the grim, dim faces of Remus and Sirius, too. James sighed. Lily Evans, walking alone, _just_ to bring that Snape kid something.

Would that Lily would bring James something as well. As long as it wasn't a Dungbomb or something. Which he highly doubted, because Lily Evans was too nice of a girl to be bringing a Dungbomb to her best friend, who (unfortunately) happened to be one Severus Snape.

James pulled back the curtain and sidled out into the dark passageway, still listening to Lily. A strong beam of light was coming from—_wait_, James thought. _Why is there a beam of light _and _voices coming from behind that painting?_

Because it actually wasn't a painting. James watched as tiny little elves just like Viggy handed Lily a tiny wrapped package and bottle of some sorts and let her walk right out of the painting, which was of a giant bowl of fruit. All four of the Marauders' mouths fell open as Lily put one foot on the floor, the elves vanished back into the expanse behind the painting, and the large door morphing back into a giant pear.

Lily handled the package carefully, cradling it like a baby in her arms. She smiled at the lump of what James assumed to be bread.

"Hey." James stepped out from the darkness, causing Lily to drop her bread.

"Oh my—!" she exclaimed, see James standing there, and then bending down to pick up her package. "What are you—?" she started, but almost dropped the bread again when she saw the other three Marauders, who had stepped out to join James as soon as she had averted her eyes. "Oh," she said, a-lot-less-than-enthusiastically, much to James's dismay. "Hullo."

"Hi!" Peter piped up, but Sirius slapped a hand over his mouth again.

"How'd you find that door?" James asked.

"Stop hurting him!" Lily exclaimed to Sirius, whose gag was making Peter turn steadily blue.

"How'd you find it?" James repeated.

"Find what—Oh, stop!" Lily shouted, and Sirius let go of Peter.

"Lily, you're going to get us all in trouble," Remus said in a hushed voice. "Stop yelling."

"Then tell Black to stop hurting him!"

"What, Lily?" Sirius asked. "I thought housemates were supposed to call each other by their first names. Or do you really hate me that much?"

"I don't hate you," Lily said a little guiltily, although her tone suggested otherwise.

"Ah, I see. Then it's Snape who's poisoning your mind, is it?"

"You shut up about him."

"Then tell us how you found that secret room behind the picture." Sirius smiled a pert smile at Lily, who sighed heavily.

"It's _not_ a secret room," she said, with a hint of know-it-all. "It's the kitchens. And it's none of your business how I found it."

"Come on, _please_ tell us," James pressed.

"Just tickle the pear," Lily said huffily, and tried to move past the boys. They wouldn't let her. "Let me move, please."

"Where're you going?" Sirius asked, always the bully. It was only the second week of school and already he had wedgied six Hufflepuffs, stuffed the heads of two Ravenclaws down the toilet, and he and James together looked up and practiced three different hexes and were about to try them on Snape the next time they saw him. There was one where his toenails would keep growing until they either curled up and became ingrown or burst out of his shoes, and James couldn't decide which one he wanted to happened more.

"None of your business," was Lily's reply. She shoved past them, and kept walking. James hurried after her, catching up. He was about to say something about how pretty she looked, but she cut him off. "Please leave me alone."

"Why?"

"Because."

But James didn't turn back. He wasn't really sure where the others were, but he didn't really care. "I think you look nice."

"I just got out of bed!" Lily sounded insulted. James took a good look at her. Sure, her pretty red hair was sticking out at odd angles and he could see dark circles under her eyes when they passed a window, but he still thought she was the prettiest girl he'd ever met.

"I think you look nice anyway," James said, and saw tears welling up in Lily's eyes. "I'm sorry, I—"

"Please, just go away!" Lily cried. "I'm trying to give Sev a snack and you have to stalk me!"

"I'm _not_ stalking you!" James cried, and his yell echoed off the wall.

"Shut it, mate!" called Sirius from down the hall.

"James, please just go away!" Lily and James burst out of the hallway, Lily now running and James trying to catch up with her. James saw the moving staircases in front of him, and was about to yell to Lily to watch out, when he rammed into her. Lily was teetering on the edge of the landing, because the staircase at that moment had decided to move. James's force knocked her over the edge.

"Aah!" Lily screamed, her arms flying wildly as she dropped over the edge. James grabbed for her, clasped her hand, and found himself being carried over the edge by her weight. His feet slipped over and he fell, but he grabbed crazily and found a hold on the floor he had just been standing on.

The sound of breaking glass reached his ears as Lily's bottle and bread fell out of her hands and smashed against a staircase several flights below. James could hear Lily's whimpers.

"James!" Remus and Sirius cried in unison, and James heard another voice call out Lily's name.

"Lily!" cried Snape from across the stairwell, and James looked down to see him staring wide-eyed in horror at Lily.

"Sev, please!" Lily whimpered. James heard a crunching sound over to the side of him as Lily's hand began to get sweaty. He looked to his left to see another staircase moving straight towards them, looking to match up with the floor that James was now holding onto.

Lily saw it, too. "Sev, _please_!" she shrieked, her voice shrill.

A cackling laugh sounded from down the hallway that the Marauders and Lily had just come from. "Peeves, go away!" Peter whispered, and James felt his heart sink.

"What's this?" the poltergeist cackled, zooming down and floating in front of James's face. "Potty Wee Potter and Lily Pad hanging around?"

"Peeves," James struggled to say, still trying to hold onto to Lily's hand. She was shaking from sobs, and the staircase was coming nearer. "Go get a teacher, Peeves. A teacher!"

"Don't think so, Potty," Peeves cackled, and began to sing.

"_Potty Wee Potter and Lily Pad, too,_

_Hanging out, swinging, but their faces are blue_

_Uh-oh I hear that staircase coming nearer_

_Potty will choose whose life is dearer._

_Save the girl or save his own skin_

_But Peeves would toss them both in the rubbish bin_."

"Peeves, please!" James shouted.

"Severus, help!" Lily cried through her tears, and Snape scrambled onto a staircase only a floor below Lily.

"Let go, Lily!" he cried, holding down his hands out. She shook her head frightenedly. "Do it!"

"Listen to him!" James cried, and let go of Lily's hand just as Snape was directly below the girl.

Lily screamed bloody murder as she fell, landing somewhat accurately into Snape's arms but crashing to the floor all the same. James felt hands scramble at his own and he was pulled to safety just as the staircase closed in, only a corner of his robes getting caught. He ripped it free, and ran down the staircase as Snape was pulling Lily off of theirs.

"Are you all right?" James asked, but was blocked from Lily as Snape stepped in front of him.

"Get away," he said darkly, his greasy hair falling over his eyes.

"Just let me talk—"

"The only one you will be talking to, James Potter," came the harsh, strict voice of Professor McGonagall, "is the headmaster." James turned to see the Head of Gryffindor house standing rigidly next to Peter at the top of the staircase, Peeves the Poltergeist floating serenely next to her, as if nothing had happened.

James sighed, and Sirius cursed again. Lily started crying a bit more, and James made to go help her up, but Snape got there first.

"All of you will be reporting to the headmaster," McGonagall continued, shooting glaring looks at Peter, who cringed, Lily, who burst into fresh tears, Snape, who scowled, and James, who held out his hands as if to say, _It wasn't my fault_!

McGonagall's face was grim. "Your heads of house will attend the meeting as well, which means myself and Professor Slughorn. I am ashamed in all of you. It is only the second week of school, and already I have four of you in detention and two more joining them to sneak out at night. Five points away from Slytherin and Gryffindor for each of you."

"But that's not fair!" Sirius cried. "There's only one Slytherin and five Gryffindors!"

"Life is not fair," McGonagall shot at him venomously. "Now come." The children got up, Snape pushing ahead of the Marauders, supporting a tearful Lily on his shoulder. James scowled and followed them up the staircase.

Peeves was still floating with a smile by the end of the staircase. James passed by him last, and stopped in front of him. "Thanks," James whispered so McGonagall wouldn't hear him.

Peeves smiled again. And then blew a giant raspberry in James's face. James silently thanked God that he couldn't feel the poltergeist's spit.

"Potter!" McGonagall barked, and James hurried to catch up with the rest of the group, who, from behind, resembling a group of such motley appearances that James, despite his predicament, couldn't help but smile.


	17. Punctuation

So. It's been as ass-load of a time since I updated. BUt thanks so so so so so so much if you've kept checking back for an update. You're the ones I write for. I'm a bit iffy about this chapter, if you can make assumptions from the title. (wink)

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Lily cringed under the gaze of the headmaster. It wasn't really a glare, she decided, but she thought about the heinous crime she had just committed, and thought it was unnaturally for the headmaster to be smiling. McGonagall and Slughorn certainly weren't.

The six children were lined up in front of the headmaster's desk side-by-side, in this order: Sev, Lily, Peter, Remus, Sirius, and then James. Lily kept catching the glances James was throwing her, and she didn't like them. She tightened her grip on Sev's hand, which was hidden from everyone else. Professor Slughorn was standing next to Severus, and McGonagall next to James. She had a tight grip on his shoulder, her wrinkled old hand somewhat resembling a bird's claw.

Albus Dumbledore continued to stroke his beard and smile at the children. McGonagall coughed slightly, making all the heads in the room turn to stare at her. "Could we please get on with this, headmaster?" she asked politely but impatiently. "I've been low on sleep lately."

Lily couldn't see the Head of Gryffindor very well through her forming tears, but she knew McGonagall was wearing her dressing gown and looked very fit for bed.

"Of course, Minerva," the headmaster said, and McGonagall's first name suddenly reminded Lily of a book her mother had once read to her and Petunia: _A Proud Taste of Scarlet and Miniver_. Petunia had hated that book. Lily had loved it, although it had been such a long time since she had last read it that she hardly remembered what it was about anymore.

Lily was startled out of her book reverie when the headmaster spoke up again. "Second week of school, children." He grinned again. "The second week! I think this is the fastest rate of detentions Hogwarts has ever seen."

Lily's chin trembled, and a tear splashed down her cheek. Sev squeezed her hand tighter.

"I am disappointed in the fact that after their detention ended, Misters Potter, Black, Lupin, and Snape did not return straight back to their common rooms."

Sev gave a cough. "I lost track of time and stayed for longer than the other boys, Professor."

Dumbledore grinned a knowing grin at the Marauders and Sev. "Of course. But what about the other boys? Running through the halls, knocking down tapestries—"

"Only three," James added.

"Three?" Dumbledore asked incredulously. "I only saw two that were knocked down." James blushed, and Sirius cursed under his breath.

"None of that!" McGonagall barked.

"Anyway," Dumbledore continued. "And you two, Miss Evans, Mr. Pettigrew. Neither of you had detention. So why were you up?"

There was a long silence as Lily waited for Peter to speak and Peter waited for Lily to spill the beans. "I went out with my friends," Peter finally whispered.

"I see," Dumbledore said, still with a smile. "And you, Miss Evans?"

Lily stumbled over her words. Sev squeezed her hand and smiled at her. "I—I knew—I knew Severus was coming back from d-detention," she stuttered, "s-so I b-brought him a snack."

"There's no need to be afraid, my dear," Dumbledore said kindly to Lily. "Do I look like the type of man who would curse you into a million pieces?" To be honest, Lily did _not_ think he looked like a kind of man who would do such a thing, but she knew better. "But that explains the mess of butterbeer and pumpernickel bread on the staircases," Dumbledore said. He added to Severus, "Which is too bad. The butterbeer from the Three Broomsticks is the best I have tasted in all my years" (Lily guessed that they numbered a lot) "and the kitchen's pumpernickel bread is exceptionally good. I'm guessing that's where you were coming from?" he asked Lily.

"Yes," she squeaked.

"Good." Dumbledore stood up and wandered over to a strange looking perch near the back of his office. He gave a sad, low sort of whistle in the direction of the window, and Lily wasn't quite sure why. "No need to worry, all of you."

McGonagall coughed loudly. Her look was stern.

"Of course, points will be taken away—"

"More?!" James exclaimed. "We've already had five each!"

"If you hadn't been causing such a ruckus in the hallway, young man—!" McGonagall barked.

"It wasn't my fault, Lily was running!" James shot back.

"Because of you!" Lily cried, suddenly forgetting she was sitting in front of McGonagall, Dumbledore, Slughorn, and Sev. "Always following me about! I just wish you'd leave me alone, Potter!"

James looked crestfallen, his face bright red. She had called him Potter. Only enemies in different houses called each other by their last names. They were definitely in the same house, and Lily hadn't thought they were enemies. Sirius was furious, Remus embarrassed, Peter looking as if he was about to cry. Sev just looked confused. Lily's bottom lip trembled.

"This sounds like a private problem," said Dumbledore quietly, a sad gleam in his eye as he looked from Lily to James. "But I'm sure we'll come around."

No. No, she wouldn't come around. Lily would go on hating James for the rest of her life, she decided. He and his smirk. He and his strutting, stupid little walk. He and his head of hair that, at one point in time, Lily had liked so much but now no longer did. James and his friends, James and his family, James and the way he thought he knew so much about you and others and potions and everything else in the entire world.

Well, James knew nothing. He didn't know about Lily or anything else. He thought he did. But he didn't. And that was that, Lily decided.

Oh, but the tone of Dumbledore's voice! As if he knew something Lily didn't and therefore thought he had the upper hand over her and everyone else but at the same time was sad about it. Like he didn't want to have the upper hand. Even though Lily knew that was how it went with teachers, them having an advantage over their students, the way Dumbledore was now looking at her with that same sparkle she had seen before cut straight into her heart and made her even more angry.

She remembered walking back to the dormitory in a daze, Professor McGonagall separating her from the rest of the Gryffindor boys. Mary and Alice were sitting by the fire in two large comfy armchairs. McGonagall's keen eye, however, didn't catch them, and Lily sunk into the large chair, squeezed up against Mary as the Marauders trudged up the boys' staircase.

"What happened?" Alice asked.

"Nothing," Lily said, once again immediately on the brink of tears when she heard Alice's voice. What was wrong with her?

"I heard screaming," Mary said, matter-of-factly. "What happened, Lil?"

"I met Potter and Black and Remus and Peter," Lily said, oblivious to the fact she had called Remus and Peter by their first names, but not James nor Sirius.

"And?"

"I ran away from them and fell over the edge of the stairs."

"What!?"

"But I've been feeling so weird all the time lately, you guys, like there's a big know in my chest—"

"You fell over the edge?"

"Yes, but that's not what I want to talk to you about—"

"Are you all right?!"

"I'm fine!" Lily cried. "Just listen to me, please?"

Mary and Alice nodded in unison.

"My stomach has been hurting a lot lately and I always feel as if I want to cry and when I do cry I can't stop and I get so mad all the time and I just want people to leave me alone." Mary and Alice's faces were covered by dancing shadows, and Lily couldn't see their reaction. "What's wrong with me?"

Mary and Alice exchanged glances. Alice slowly reached into her pocket and Lily thought she was going to pull out her wand. But Lily was handed a small white piece of cloth and a strange smile from Alice.

"Me mum thought I was going to start soon, too. But I guess you need it more than I do."

Lily looked down at the cloth, and she knew what it was. Petunia had these, and Lily couldn't remember a single day after Tuney had started using these that she hadn't had some snippy remark to make. Lily nodded, her chest knotting up again, and pocketed the white cloth.

She ran upstairs, and entered the girls' bathroom, where it was dark and cold. Lily sat down, not bothering to turn on the light. She looked down, and officially became a woman.

Oh, shit.


	18. Five Second Rule

I'm totally sorry for my lack of updates. Sometime in the next week or so I'm planning to have at least two new chapters up, seeing as I'll be going on summer holiday to France for three weeks and then I really won't be able to update. Here's a pretty much fluff chapter.

* * *

Severus was forced to leave Lily just as they exited Dumbledore's office. McGonagall was escorting the Marauders and Lily back to their dormitory, and Severus cringed under the heavy weight of Slughorn's arm as the Potions teacher placed it on his student's shoulder.

"You know, Snape," Slughorn said, causing Severus to scowl. Despite Sev's love for potions and the like, there were only three things he hated in the world more than Professor Slughorn: and they were Gryffindors, Sirius Black, and James Potter.

James Potter. Ha. Sev grinned. Slughorn's words slowly faded out as he recalled how Lily had snapped at Potter. Sev wanted to cry with happiness. Now, after all this time, James would finally leave Lily alone and Sev would be free to make his move. If things were only that easy.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Sev knew the only reason Lily had been holding his hand so tightly was because she had been so scared. But at the sight of all her tears, Sev had wanted to hold her in his skinny arms and kiss every single tear right off her cheeks.

She was so wonderful. So beautiful, so smart. They had so much in common. She loved potions, he loved potions…. He loved potions, and…she loved potions. Sev's face fell suddenly at this thought. What else? What else did they have in common?

Lily was pretty. Sev wasn't all that attractive. Lily had friends. Well, Sev had friends, too. But Avery and Mulciber had just stolen his socks the other day, and after letting Goyle borrow them—well, let's just say that Sev did _not_ want his toes chewed off. Okay. So he really didn't have friends. They were more—polite acquaintances. Lily was smart. Sev struggled in everything except Defense Against the Dark Arts, and…potions. Lily (with the exception of Petunia) had a supporting family. What was more important, Lily had a sober family. Severus did not.

"You think so, too, eh Snape?" Slughorn's voice jolted Sev out of his trance. His big meaty hands, still glistening with pineapple dust, remained heavy on Sev's shoulders.

"Yeah, sure, Professor," Sev replied absentmindedly. They were nearing the staircases where Potter had sliped over the edge, taking Lily with him. God, how Sev wished he had fallen, broken his neck, and had died an excruciatingly slow and painful death, lying there on the staircases as a puddle of his own blood seeped into Potter's excellent hairstyle—

But if Potter had fallen and died, it pretty much meant Lily would have, too. Sev did not want that. His face paled in the darkness at the thought of it. Slughorn raised his wand, which illuminated the way in front of them. Snape, unfortunately, hadn't brought his own wand.

"I thought so too, when I was your age," Slughorn said, continuing on a conversation that Sev wasn't even listening to. "But then I realized I was too concerned with my potions grade, and a girl like her just got in my way. She was beautiful with blonde hair and the greenest eyes you've ever seen—"

No. Lily had the greenest eyes Sev had ever seen.

"And so I forgot about her. And you should forget about Lily Evans, Snape." Snape's head suddenly jerked up. What was he saying? "She's anice enough girl, but if you think you could ever have a hance with a girl like that—" here, Slughorn let out a snort "—boy are you wrong. She'd be better off with someone else. Like that Potter boy. She claims she hates him, but I can tell he likes her. And if a boy likes a girl hard enough, sooner or later she starts to like him, too."

SHUT THE HELL UP!! Sev wanted to scream at his teacher. He wanted to punch him so hard in the face. Don't listen to him, don't listen to him—

"Of course, the boy's got to be good-looking enough. Otherwise, the girl will just think you're a creep and a stalker." Slughorn laughed again, and shook Sev's shoulders slightly. They began to walk down the staircase. "I think we've both got experience with that, don't we, Snape?"

Sev pushed his teacher's arm off his shoulder, stopping in the middle of the staircase. "Stop," he said slowly and darkly.

"Come on, my boy, we both know perfectly well that neither of us—"

"Just stop." Sev didn't want to go any further. If he had that Muggle gun that lay ever so hibernatingly in his father's dresser drawer, he would have shot his teacher in the face ten minutes ago.

Slughorn looked disconcerted, and a bit insulted. "All right," he said with a note of confusion. "I guess I'll leave you here. Don't go sneaking off again, you hear me? And if you ever want to talk about Miss Evans, Snape—"

"Goodbye." Sev's voice was low and dripping with hatred. He knew he was bordering insolence, but he didn't care anymore. Slughorn stumbled off down the staircase, leaving Sev in the dark. Sev's foot started tapping absentmindedly, causing little splashing noises. The subtle glow of the moonlight through the window across the staircase chasm glinted in the puddle. Sev bent down, and dipped his fingers in the liquid.

He sniffed them cautiously. It was butterbeer. Broken glass littered the floor around him, and a small, dark, loafish shape was split in two near Sev's left hand. This was where Lily had fallen.

Sev reached forward, and grabbed the two halves of the bread loaf. He smelled them carefully. He stood up, still holding the loaves, and broke off a piece. Sev placed it in his mouth.

The bread was sweet and delicious, and tasted just how Lily smelled. "God damn it," Sev hissed under his breath. He continued his trek towards his dormitory in a strangeish mood, still clutching the bread as he heard the glass chunks break underneath his feet.


	19. Cult Following

Today is Super-Update Day!! Two new chapters of this story, and two new one-shots!! Woo! Please enjoy, and get ready for some real drama.  
I do not own Harry Potter, Lily Evans, James Potter, Severus Snape, the Marauders, or any part of the Harry Potterdome.  
PS: Who _loves_ the new Jonas Brothers album? I do!!

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The next morning Lily awoke with the bright light of midday streaming through her window. Mary and Alice were gone from their beds, the sheets already made up by the help, and as Lily looked around, she saw that she was the only body left asleep (or awake) in the dormitory.

She sat up quickly, a throbbing sensation starting in her temple. Her eyes felt heavy as she scanned the room for her slippers, and as she held up fingers to touch her eyelids, Lily then remembered that she had cried herself to sleep. The rushing hatred of herself for doing so and the memories of the night before came shooting painfully into her body, and the tight feeling in her head transferred, but did not completely disappear, into her chest, and she found herself wishing to cry again.

Despite the bright sun outside, Lily felt that the wind had started early in the month when she stuck her hand out the window, and decided that she didn't care what she wore that day. She reached for the first sweater she could find inside her trunk, and pulled it over her head. She debated on whether or not to leave her pajama pants on, but decided it would just be looked at as sloppy. So she pulled a pair of pants out as well and struggled to pull them on.

Lily thought she heard the stone steps creak as she walked down them. The common room was empty except for a group of boys crowded around the roaring fire. Lily thought it added unnecessary heat to the room, and that the common room would have been fine without the fire. She was about to call out to the boys, who were all whispering to each other. The tallest one resembled Simon Finch, her partner in Charms class, but her hello came out only halfway—it was more of a "Heh—!" than a greeting. She bit the rest of it back in hatred as she saw that the group was, in fact, not Simon Finch but stupid James Potter and his cronies.

James turned at the sound of her voice, the look of hopefulness on his face freezing Lily in mid-step. Her look of glee to see Simon flicked immediately to a look of intense revulsion, but she felt as if she was being looked at under a microscope as Black's, Remus's, and Peter's faces all flickered to her. She could see the corner of stack of papers the boys were crowded around from underneath James's arm, and the tip of the quill Remus held in his hand quivered slightly. Black just looked amused.

She let out an "Ugh!" and turned quickly away. Lily heard James shout out her name and get up to follow her out of the common room, but she made it a point to slam the portrait in his face, much to the chagrin of the Fat Lady.

"Excuse me, missy!" the Fat Lady called, but Lily continued on, angrily. "You'll be paying Galleons for the damage you just caused to my frame!" The voice of the Fat Lady followed Lily down the hall, but Lily didn't care just how many gold coins she would have to give Dumbledore. All she was concerned about was putting as many steps between her and that idiot James Potter as she possibly could.

James's shoulders slumped as the portrait snapped loudly shut in front of his nose. He stood looking at the blank wooden backside of the painting, hearing the guardian of the Gryffindor common room yelling at someone through the walls.

"Come on, mate." James could hear Sirius's voice ever-so-faintly somewhere in the distance.

James nodded, more to himself than to his friends, and returned to where they were sitting. The heat of the fire was uncomfortable, and he thought the common room would be fine without the fire. But it didn't make him feel as miserable as Lily did.

"Listen," Remus continued, obviously trying to distract James from Lily. He was doing a good job of it, too, unlike Peter, who proceeded to stare at James like an animal in the zoo. "I don't see the point of this."

"There could be more, Remus!" Sirius shouted.

"And what the hell are we going to do with them when—excuse me, if—we find them?"

"I dunno," Sirius said. "They'd be great for shortcuts."

"And skipping class!" Peter piped up with a hopeful glance at James, as if he wanted to prove to his idol just how badass he could be.

Sirius let out a snort and James didn't respond. "Yeah, skipping class, too." Sirius smirked at James, like they were sharing an inside joke. Peter's face reddened. He hated when Sirius and James shared those intimate moments—but he was rewarded happily when he saw James return the smile only halfheartedly.

James looked down at the stack of parchment Remus had in front of him—he didn't remember why they had a stack, there was only one thing to write down. The location of the secret passageway they had found the night before was scribbled at the top of the page, but the words swam before his eyes as he thought of Lily. James wasn't entirely aware of the words, "It'd be a good place to bring a girl," leave his mouth.

Sirius let out a triumphant, "Aha!", slapping James on the back. Peter's face reddened even more, and Remus exhaled a snobby and exasperated, "Honestly, James!"

"A snogging niche!" Sirius cried.

"Secret passageways are _not_ for snogging!" Remus said, his voice raised.

"And how would you know?" Sirius asked with a raised eyebrow. James slowly tuned out the following argument. "I bet you anything that Gryffindor and Ravenclaw _got in on_ in a secret passageway!" Sirius let out a cackle of laughter, and Peter proceeded to laugh halfheartedly. He so wanted to fit into the group, but he wasn't exactly sure what _getting in on_ meant….

"You are so immature!" Remus cried, waking James out of his reverie.

"I'm as old as you are, stupid!" Sirius cried, and James had to admit that his response did seem a bit juvenile.

"Yeah, so what?" Remus yelled, knocking over the closed bottle he had brought with him from breakfast that morning.

"Loosen up, mate," Sirius replied, a bit quieter this time. He cast his eyes over to James, who sat almost as nervously as Peter did.

"Yeah, well why don't you piss off?" Remus said, an unknown temper flaring, and he, too, stormed out of the common room.

The remaining three stared for a few moments after the boy, their pale friend who always looked so sickly. He was starting to look even more sickly now, much more than the previous week and much, _much _more than the time James had seen him in Magical Menagerie.

"What's his problem?" Sirius asked no one in particular, ignoring the whispered, "I dunno" and shrug of the shoulders from Peter. "Aha," Sirius said in an understanding tone, and James watched him reach across the stack of parchment and grab Remus's bottle. Sirius opened the bottle and took a sniff, feigning disgust at whatever he smelled. "He's drunk!"

James knew this last comment was a jest, seeing as when he took the bottle from Sirius, he could smell nothing. But Peter's face perked up suddenly. Not exactly in a happy way, but there was an interested note in Peter's voice as he asked, "It's alcohol?"

"Shut up, Peter," was Sirius's reply, but Peter wouldn't be quieted so easily. This was his chance. If Sirius and James saw him take a swig from Remus's alcohol, that was certainly a badass enough of a move to make the two friends accept him more.

"You sure?" Peter said, leaning forward to reach for the bottle, but Sirius silenced him with another "shut up."

"Come on," Sirius said, grabbing the bottle from James and placing it on the floor. He stood up and motioned for James to do the same. "Let's go get some lunch." The invite was obviously directed just as James, but not too obvious for Peter to think he was invited, too.

James stood up and made for the staircase so he could grab a jacket with Sirius. He stopped at the bottom, waiting for Peter, who was still staring curiously at the "alcohol." "You coming?" he asked.

Peter was surprised at James's sudden desire to include him. James was, too. "Nah," Peter said. "I'll wait for you here." And then he went back to staring at the still-opened bottle.

James and Sirius had grabbed sweaters out of their trunks, but James declined Sirius's invitation to go anyway. Despite the feelings he had, James didn't really want to see Lily just then. And where else would she be if not at lunch? "I'll just wait for you here," said James, almost echoing Peter's reply.

Sirius rolled his eyes but left James in the dormitory by himself. James didn't move, listening to the following interaction between Sirius and Peter.

The second his two idols had disappeared up the stairs, Peter had grabbed for Remus's "alcohol" and held it to his nose. It had no scent, so it was possible that it wasn't alcohol—but then again, Peter had never actually smelled alcohol before (he hadn't even gotten this close in proximity to it, really), so there was also a possibility that it still could be. He was holding it up to his lips, ready to taste, when Sirius suddenly appeared at his shoulder and grabbed the bottle from Peter.

"You idiot," Sirius said, capping it and dropping it back to the floor. Sirius continued to exit out of the dorm and Peter scrambled to follow him, his face bright red from embarrassment.

James stood still for a few more seconds before rushing down to the fireplace and picking up Remus's quill, parchment, and bottle. James wasn't interested in drinking any of it—but he placed the bottle onto Remus's sheets when he had re-entered the dormitory.

Sigûr, James's owl, was sleeping in her cage when James came back in. He took a sheet of parchment and scribbled a message onto it: short, but to the point and very sincere. James looked over at Sigûr, who was still snoozing with her head underneath the wing with the spot shaped like a moon, and set the quill down. He would wake her later.

And besides, Lily wasn't in her dormitory anyway. She was probably off getting lunch, chatting amiably with her friends Mary and Alice while smiling all friendly-like at Snivellus from across the hall. James suppressed a sudden surge of anger. He didn't even want to think about _him_ right now.

James also tried to suppress the loud noises that were now coming from his stomach, but he soon realized that the only way to fully do that was to join Lily—and Sirius and Peter—down in the Great Hall. He rolled his eyes as he headed down the stairs, only imagining what kind of evil glares Lily would send in his direction this time.

James might have been certain that Severus would have been in the Great Hall during lunch, but—for the first time in a long time—he was wrong. Severus was having the same type of feelings James was having that morning—the reluctancy to see Lily, because he, too, felt guilty.

But not only was he guilty for last night—he was _furious_ at stupid Potter for almost killing the girl he loved. And not only was she the girl he loved, but she was his best friend, too. Severus had never had a best friend before. He had never had much luck with friends. But now, as Sev stood awkwardly under the farthest tree from the castle, he was hoping that was about to change.

He was standing so awkwardly because they were all hunched quite sardine-ly together. Sev thought it was a bit strange for a group of their size to be hiding out right at the mouth of the Forbidden Forest, but then again, he wasn't with the most normal of people. Sev was wearing his large coat again, his hands stuffed into his pockets, and he kept glancing at the windows of the Great Hall in between views of his new-found "friends," hoping and yet not hoping to catch glimpses of Lily in the windows. He knew she wouldn't approve of what he was doing.

To be honest, he didn't really know what he was doing. There had been a letter, written in green ink, lying by the foot of his bed that morning, telling Sev to arrive at precisely this time and to not tell anyone what he was doing. And Sev had accepted, thrown off by the events of the night before and needing something to take his mind off of it.

At the head of the group—well, it had never been decided that this had been the head of the group, because they were all in a circle, but the almost-glow of Lucius Malfoy's white-blond hair made it almost imperative that he be the one in charge. Next to Lucius stood Goyle, with whom Sev had already been acquainted with. A few boys away from Goyle were Avery and Mulciber, who was cutting up slices of his breakfast (whatever _that_ was) with a little knife he had obviously filched from the Hall. Avery and Mulciber were best friends already, Sev could tell. They were both a year older than him, so Sev had guessed it would be so. There were other boys, too, but Sev didn't care about them.

Lucius was smirking at Sev in a way that made him feel both uncomfortable and accepted at the same time. Needless to say, Sev was in awe of the fifth-year, from the moment Sev had slid in next to him at the Slytherin table after being sorted. The way Lucius had patted Sev's back and looked into his eyes seemed to say, _I know how you feel_, and Sev had had felt welcomed with opened arms, a much better change after being torn away from Lily. Of course, he hadn't been all consoled, but this unsuspected gesture from Lucius—to be friends, real friends, instead of the kind of "I'm-bigger-than-you" mentor the looks of Lucius had first promised.

"So…" Lucius began in his slow drawl, still smirking at Sev, and despite the low volume of his voice, all the boys in the group suddenly fell silent. "Little Severus Snape, first-year student, and already in trouble." This remark incited snickers from the other boys, all older than Sev. They had all turned on him now, staring him down with dark eyes that Sev suddenly realized had the same quality—emptiness.

A shiver ran down the eleven-year-old's spine.

"But we have seen things, Snape," Lucius continued, addressing Sev by his last name. It sounded almost exactly like the way Potter always said it, but the intensity behind it did not sound, curiously enough, like hatred. It sounded like approval. "We have seen things," and here Lucius looked around at the group, nodding and smirking, "and we have spoken to People," and here Sev felt a strange feeling that that word should be capitalized, "and have been assured…to expect great things from you."

The group nodded, almost in unison, and Sev felt a strange thrill. It was almost like the scared feeling he got before he knew his father was about to beat him—but this time, Sev enjoyed it. He was unable to say why, but the looks they were all giving him—of approval, of equality, goddamn it, even of _reverence_—filled his empty belly with something food never could, and left him starving and thirsting for more.

"You intrigue me, Snape," Lucius began, throwing off the "us"s and the "we"s that a group encumbered him with. "And I want you to know—we will be watching you. Testing you. Waiting for you."

Lucius's words, quiet as though they were, seemed to ring across the clearing and pound against Sev's eardrums. And even though he had not said a word since he arrived, the way Lucius closed that sentence seemed to indicate to Sev that he should leave.

Back in the Great Hall, James was sitting next to Sirius, taking small bites out of a large sandwich. Sirius and Peter were arguing about something—or rather, Sirius was making fun of some physical feature of Peter's and Peter was just taking it good-naturedly, the idiot. James didn't want to eat. All he could concentrate on was the flicker of red hair happening every so often in the corner of his eye.

But as James continued to stare out the window in earnest, another disturbance somewhere in the bushes near the Forbidden Forest caught his glance. James squinted, desperate to see what—or who—it was, but the flicker of black settled and did not move again.

Five minutes later, James's attention was drawn to that area again, and he watched curiously as the scrawny figure of a boy suddenly emerged from the darkness at the mouth of the forest. The wind outside was blowing the hair of the boy around as he darted sneakily up the hill to the castle, and he had turned up the collars of his long coat.

James suddenly turned around to scan the Great Hall. Snivellus was not there.

But when he looked back out the window, Snivellus wasn't there, either. But what was there was a medium-sized group of older students, also peeling shadily away from the underbrush. James frowned, now totally forgetting about his sandwich.

Moments later, the doors to Great Hall opened, and James saw Snivellus hesitate at the entrance. He found what he was looking for, and a wide and wild grin spread across his face as he hurried to sit next to Lily—who, as James _hadn't_ noticed, was eating alone.

But James cast a glance out the window again, just to see the group of older boys hurrying up the hill. James recognized the gleam of blonde hair he knew to be Lucius Malfoy's—a fifth-year Slytherin with a secret reputation for trouble.

When James stole another look at Snivellus, he was surprised to see him laughing wildly at something Lily had just said. He looked changed, James decided, as if something really good had just happened. James wondered if it had anything to do with the secret meeting at the bottom of the hill.

But as Snivellus's laughter died down, he caught sight of James staring at him. James saw something flicker in his eyes, but it was immediately replaced by a look of intense hatred. Lily was concentrating on her food, but James could only stare back at Snivellus in suspicion—and complete confusion.


	20. I Love To Eat Cloud

The title is a reference to the Charlie and Lola book, _I Will Never, Not Ever, Eat A Tomato_. It's been made into a television series on Playhouse Disney. It's so cute, and is one of my favorites. Charlie tries to make picky eater Lola eat mashed potatoes by telling her they are bit of clouds.

* * *

Alice was less than happy to see that one Slytherin boy Lily was friends with slide into the spot on the bench next to her. In a single word, Alice _hated_ him. She was a Gryffindor, so it was almost imperative that she hate Slytherins, but there was something about this Snape boy that she just downright disliked. But what she hated almost more than the actual boy was the fact that Lily liked him so.

She knew perfectly well that Snape liked Lily far more than she liked him. Yes, they were friends, but Alice knew that Snape _liked_ liked Lily. A lot. That was the only good thing about seeing him around: the humorous conversations between the two, where Lily's replies were entirely made of friendship, while Snape might as well come out and shout, "I LOVE YOU!" into Lily's face.

Alice stirred her rice silently as she watched Lily converse with the boy. Mary was engrossed in the new book her parents had sent her in the mail, so she was pretty much no good for talking to. Alice breathed deeply and almost puked. The smell of lunchmeats was so pungent in the room that Alice was afraid she was breaking her vegetarian vow just by smelling it. But seriously. Couldn't Hogwarts think of anything else to serve for lunch besides ham? And turkey? And roast beef? Alice was getting a stomach ache just thinking about it.

"Hey," Alice heard Snape say to Lily as he sat down.

"Hi." Alice could sense the tension in Lily's voice.

"Where were you this morning?" Snape asked, leaning in close to Lily, who was also eating rice.

"Sleeping." And Alice caught the twang of anger at Snape in Lily's tone.

Apparently, so did Snape. "Why are you angry at me?" Lily didn't reply. "You've no reason to."

"I've no reason to!?" Lily suddenly lowered her voice and hissed venomously at Snape. Alice had to strain to hear it. "I've every reason to, Severus Snape! If you hadn't gotten yourself into detention, I never would have been out so late last night and I wouldn't have almost died and wouldn't have had to rely on the grip of James Potter to save my life."

Snape let out a wild, raucous guffaw straight from his belly, and every inch of it was drenched in sarcasm.

Almost died? Alice thought. How had Lily almost died last night? Alice hadn't even noticed that Lily had gone anywhere last night. What was she doing out in the middle of the night, with _James Potter_, no less? Alice shot a look at James, who was staring quizzically at their group. Alice noticed as Snape looked over at James, too, and gave him a rough look.

"So you're going to blame the fact that stupid James Potter takes pleasure in stalking you on me?" Snape asked, in just as low a voice as Lily. "I thought you were better than that," he added, and Alice could tell he only said that to make Lily apologize.

Fortunately for Alice, Lily didn't. "Well, you obviously thought wrong," Lily spat in Snape's face, her red hair adding to her now demonic expression. She seemed absolutely furious, now standing on her feet and glowering down at Snape. Alice quickly scanned up and down the Gryffindor table. A few Gryffindors were surprised at the fact that Snape, a Slytherin, had joined their table, but now the argument between the two first-years had caught the attention of every Gryffindor, including the Marauders but excluding Mary, who, in some miraculous way, was still reading her book. "And excuse me for trying to be your friend—"

"Well, you did a bloody terrible job at it," said Snape, and Alice could tell that he no longer was trying to make Lily apologize. The fight had just begun, Alice realized—the claws of a Gryffindor versus the fangs of a Slytherin. Alice was smacked into surprise and revulsion at Snape's comeback, and her eyes narrowed at him while her heart wrenched at the sight of the tears now forming in Lily's eyes.

"Excuse me?" Lily's voice had plunged what seemed like hundreds of octaves until Alice could barely hear her.

"You heard me," Snape said venomously, and Alice saw that the argument had now attracted the attention of several members of the Hufflepuff House. "How dare you blame me for an incident that was caused merely by your own stupidity? Are not Gryffindors—" and here Snape spat the word out like a piece of dirt in his mouth "—supposed to be loyal friends? Yeah right." A ripple of astonishment rose from both the Gryffindors and the Hufflepuffs. "What a joke. The Sorting Hat made an obvious mistake when he put Lily Evans into this house. And what's worse, Dumbledore made an even bigger one when he gave the same girl her Hogwarts letter."

Alice didn't hear her own whispered, "Lily," mingle with the same one of James Potter's. Alice wanted to reach out to the girl standing in front of her, tears pouring down her face, but as Alice's hand went for the arm of her friend, Lily had broken free of the hold Snape's words had placed on her, and ran for the exit, leaving only a strangled sob behind in her place.

Whispered words and mutters of "How dare he" and "Asshole" and "Poor Lily" swept up and down the Gryffindor table, and Alice was sure the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws were saying the same. Snape didn't even seem to notice the fact that he was not sitting at the Slytherin table and he fell back down onto the bench. The eyes of every single Gryffindor were on Snape in hatred, and Alice was surprised that Snape did not burst into flames under the heat of the glares.

Alice's mouth had fallen open in surprise, shock, and horror at what Snape had just done. Snape looked up in disgust to see Alice staring at him. "What're you looking at?" he asked heatedly, standing up.

Alice followed suit. Snape froze in place, unsure of why Alice was mimicking him. "How dare you," Alice said in a low whisper, perfectly aware she was being watched by almost everyone in the Great Hall. She reached for the first thing her hands could find: the giant bowl of mashed potatoes sitting in front of Mary, who was still reading.

The Great Hall erupted in triumphant laughter as Alice's handful of potatoes met its mark right in the middle of Snape's face. Mary had jumped out of her reverie and tried unsuccessfully to hide her laughter behind a hand. But Alice was not smiling. "Now get the hell out of here," she replied to Snape, whose face was bright red beneath the potatoes.

Snape looked as though he wanted to murder Alice, and he did not hesitate to voice his affections for her before he left. "I'll kill you," he seethed at her.

"Not if we kill you first." James Potter had stood up and was suddenly at Alice's side. And Alice's eyes might have been playing a trick on her, but it seemed at that moment the entire table of Gryffindors nodded their heads in unison. With another look of hatred, Snape turned on his heel and left the room, piercing glares following him as he left. The only people who didn't seem to hate Snape as he left were the Slytherins, and a large group of boys, one with incredibly blonde hair, which Snape passed on his way out.

With a heavy sigh, Alice fell back into her seat.

"Why'd you do _that_?" Mary asked, still laughing.

Alice was about to reply when a slightly pudgy boy came up to Alice and said in a whisper of a voice, "That was extremely brave, Alice."

"Thank you," Alice replied with a smile. "What's your name?" The colors in the boy's tie let Alice recognize him as a Hufflepuff, but he would only identify himself to her as "Longbottom. Just Longbottom."

Alice had to stifle a laugh, despite her heavy heart, at the sound of the boy's last name, but there was something nice about the way the boy was looking at her, as if she was the apple of his eye. Alice found herself blushing underneath his gaze, which flattered her, but she couldn't really say she felt the same.

"It was nice to meet you, Longbottom," she said, "but I'm going to check on Lily." And the boy nodded at her and returned to his seat at the Hufflepuff table. Alice got up, and ran quickly from the hall, not fully noticing the grateful stares people were giving her.

The Common Room was silent when Alice entered it, but the sound of someone sobbing grew louder as Alice approached her dormitory. She rapped lightly on the door, and pushed it open, and saw Lily sobbing into her pillow with such force that any passerby would have thought Lily was trying to split it in two with her head.

"Lily," Alice quietly whispered, slipping her arm across Lily's warm back and rubbing it soothingly. "Lily…"

"Why?" Lily's question was simple but almost indiscernible underneath her sobs. "Why me?"

"I—" Alice began, lying beside Lily on the bed. "I don't know, Lily." Alice rested her head beside Lily, wiping the tears from her eyes as Lily twisted over to look at her. "I don't know."

The next thing Alice knew, the sun had already set, and there was a sudden and unexpected rap at the window next to Lily's bed. Lily and Alice sat up quickly, both of their eyes swollen from crying, and Alice went to open the window.

A dark colored owl flew into the room, and landed in front of Lily, holding out its leg, tied to which was a folded piece of parchment. Lily took it silently from the bird's leg, and unfolded it. "What does it say?" Alice said, while petting the owl. She was quite in awe of the beauty of the crescent-moon shaped white spot on the bird's wing.

_Lily_, the note said, _I just wanted to let you know I'm sorry for last night. I never meant for you to get hurt_.

"How dare he send you a letter and not apologize to your face," Alice said, referencing to Snape.

"It's better than nothing," was all Lily replied with.

Alice was appalled. "And you're going to reply to this?" she asked incredulously.

"He took the time to write it," Lily replied softly, and was already scribbling back a reply. She had already tied it to the bird's leg when Alice fell back onto the bed.

"I can't believe you, Lily," Alice said.

"Just let me do what I want," Lily said, letting the bird fly out the window.

Several minutes later it had returned with another note, scribbled underneath Lily's.

_It wasn't your fault_, Lily had written in neat cursive.

_Yes, it was._

_I know you didn't mean for it to happen that way. I turned out to be okay_, Lily had written back.

_Well, what if you hadn't?_ was written this time, and Alice felt sick the entire time reading it. _I think I would have died if you had, too. I hated seeing you just hang there like that, with only an idiot's sweaty hand to hold onto._

_Don't blame yourself for what happened_, Lily wrote.

_If I hadn't gotten a bloody detention, none of it would have happened. Both of us would have been safe and sound, snug in our beds, not falling off the side of staircases_, was the reply.

Lily was onto a third piece of parchment this time as she hastily scribbled her eager reply. Alice was brushing her teeth, not wanting any part of this. _It's fine. You just scared me. Please don't do it again._

_Will you please forgive me?_ The owl looked like she was finally getting tired, and Lily hesitated as she saw the reply.

_Yes_, she wrote simply, but her heart fell as she saw what Sev had written when the owl came back again.

_Thank you. But…I think it is best if we stay away from each other. I get too distracted when I am around you. I just want you to know that I really do care about you._

Lily found herself nodding as she wrote back a reply, her scribbles readjusting themselves to form back into her neat cursive. _Yes. That's fine. And I believe you._

Once more, the owl flew back out the window, and Lily set her quill down. Maybe Sev was right. They needed a break. Alice came back out from the bathroom, and climbed into her bed.

"Goodnight, Lily."

James had a treat for Sigur in his hand as she flew back in through the window. She quickly took the treat as James took the note, seeing Lily's short reply on the page. _Yes. That's fine. And I believe you._

James smiled, placing the note onto his nightstand, watching as Sigur climbed back into her cage. James settled back against his pillows, preparing for sleep, all with the same satisfied, grateful grin on his lips.


	21. Attack on the Platform

Severus clutched his sweater close after coming through the barrier. For some reason, rushing through the wall to Platform 9 ¾ always gave him the chills, like running through a windstorm on a December day. He had his smallish cart with him, piled not-very-high with his almost-empty trunk.

He scanned the busy platform, looking for familiar faces. He caught the shining blonde hair of Lucius Malfoy and his waving hand as the older boy stepped onto the train, which was already whistling.

Of course. Just like his father to get him here late.

He handed his cart to one of the attendees, who proceeded to wheel it towards the back of the train. Now Severus was alone in this sea of people, holding onto only his small knapsack which contained an apple and the flagon of firewhisky he had stolen from home.

Well, there wasn't really anything else to do besides hop on the train. He started to make his way when all of a sudden he heard a scream, a flash of red, and was knocked over.

"Oh my god!" he screeched, shoving off the limp body that had fallen on him. Several people had turned to watch, and Severus began to panic. "What's going on?!" He struggled quickly up and whipped out his wand, pointing it every which way. "What happened, who's hurt?"

But no one was moving. Severus was completed prepared for some sort of attack, for Death Eaters to begin swooping down on Platform 9 ¾ , but all he heard was the rumble of the train and the small giggles of the person who was still lying on the ground.

At the sound of that laughter, Severus felt his heart stop. He looked down.

There she was. As beautiful as ever, Lily Evans was rolling on the ground with laughter, clutching her belly and pointing at him. Severus felt his face grow red. Every bit of drama from the previous year came flooding back to him, but it wasn't like he had ever forgot it.

"You—!" Lily gasped, still laughing. "So—funny—ahh! You were so—hahahaaha!" Severus couldn't be freaked out for much longer, not when _Lily Evans_ was lying on the ground next to his feet. She was still laughing as she stood up.

"That was the funniest thing!" she exclaimed, wrapping her arms around Severus. Apparently, unlike her friend, she _had_ forgot about their problems. Severus didn't mind.

"Hey, Lily," Severus said quietly, returning her friendly squeeze.

When she heard him say her name, Lily stopped laughing, but her smile didn't go away. Her voice got quieter, and she asked, "How've you been?"

"Smashing."  
"Good."

There was a slight awkward silence. "Where's your mum and dad? And your…Petunia?" Severus had certainly not forgotten Lily's atrocious older sister.

"They just left."

"Oh."

"Ah! I'm so excited for this year! It's going to be just me and you!" Lily exclaimed, grabbing his hand a pulling him towards the train.

Severus smiled, even through glares from Potter, Black, Lupin, Pettigrew, and Lily's friend on the train. Now he was excited, too.


End file.
